


Hurricane

by Shawarmerei (livefromarkham)



Series: The Perfect Storm [2]
Category: British Actor RPF, Marvel Avengers Movies RPF, Real Person Fiction, Thor (Movies) RPF
Genre: A Ton Of Mind Control, F/M, It details all the stuff that happened in the past which is why so many OCs, Less violence than I thought there would be, M/M, Sort of like a prequel to Lights, Still a bit of violence though because people die, THIS NEEDS TO STOP, Tom is still simultaneously completely terrifying and a gigantic teddy bear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2017-12-06 11:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livefromarkham/pseuds/Shawarmerei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a tropical storm, forged by the skies and shaped by the world in order to bring the humans to their knees. A force of nature, uncontrollable, he destroys everything in his path. He existed before them and will exist when they are gone. He is everlasting and unstoppable.</p><p>But he doesn’t want this. He never wanted this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No matter how many times you told me you wanted to leave

Eventually, he decides it’s alright for you to take a look into his mind. He trusts you fully. You don’t quite know why, but you don’t feel it necessary to ask questions. You’ll take what you can get. So he sits you down one day on the couch, doing nothing but sitting motionless and making eye contact. His eyes are as beautiful as ever. Something probes into your mind, feels you out, and tugs at you a little. You decide to let it take you where it will.

He allows you free reign. You can see whatever you’d like. Ever the curious one, you venture into the darkest recesses of his brain, exploring his deepest secrets and guarded weaknesses. You find one thing in particular that you’d like to see in full—his life before you. His _full_ life before you. He’s not sure whether he wants to relive it or not, but he trusts you, so he allows you access, and his life story starts playing out like a movie before your eyes. He’s only told you so much of his past, and now you’re going to be able to see it all happen.

You decide this is for the better.

 

In the beginning, there were seven.

The first to be created was Roanah, the Warrior. Roanah was large, larger than any that were to come. He was very strong, quick despite his bulk, and had a supernatural endurance. If death were to come, it would only come in the night while he was asleep. He was quite handsome, though no one was around to see.

Second came Atusiel, the Commander. Atusiel was intelligent, self-assured, and had a way with words. His grasp of language allowed him to weave inescapable webs with his words, so that if he were to speak, and one were to listen, they could not disobey him. His voice commanded compliance, and he used this often to get what he wished. He and Roanah did not get along particularly well, as Roanah’s intellect did not match up to Atusiel’s, and Atusiel thought of him as a brute who was only capable of smashing things to get what he wanted.

And so the third was created, Posurin, the Mediator. Posurin was very good at mediating due to his ability to read minds and thus see both sides of the situation. He was a wonder with creating and telling stories, as well, and used that as a method of calming the two and keeping them from eventually trying to kill one another.

The fourth was Lanadel, the Beauty. Gorgeous, but unable to bear children, it was said that her body produced a smell so divine that none could resist her were she to make the move. Atusiel proved this very well on his own, becoming almost instantly smitten with her because of their similar powers concerning the manipulation of the mind. With Atusiel spending more time with Lanadel, he spent less time fighting Roanah, and for some time there was peace. 

Fifth was Hirese, the Seer. Hirese did not stir things up much, since he mostly kept to himself and his visions of the future. He predicted that there were two more to come, and that the appearance of the seventh would breed chaos in the group, eventually splitting them apart so wholly that they would never be fully reunited again. So, naturally, the others were rather anxious when the sixth appeared.

This was Arasen, the Runner. Arasen could transport herself over long distances in the blink of an eye with very little effort. She was very non-confrontational, trying not to start a fight with anyone in the group and fleeing when anyone (usually Lanadel and Atusiel) tried to speak badly with her. Intimidated by the older ones, she had little interaction with the group at all until the arrival of the seventh.

The seventh and final of the Original Seven was Tasedio, the Trickster, with whom the story begins.

 

The first thing he remembered was the fall, seeing the sky rush further and further away from him as he held a hand up outstretched toward the heavens, as if he’d been thrown out of the clouds toward the earth and he hadn’t wanted to leave. He wasn’t falling straight down, though. He was falling at an angle, as if he actually had been thrown. But he couldn’t recall how he’d started falling, and there was no way of knowing what would happen next.

He collided with the ground several seconds later, his nerves set ablaze with pain and several of his bones snapping like twigs, throwing up clods of dirt as he skidded to a stop in the middle of a forest. For a while, he simply lay there, groaning to himself and trying his hardest to pop his neck back into place. Every muscle in his body that he could still feel was shaking, every bone aching. So rather than trying to get up, he closed his eyes and decided to wait for a while. There was no rush. He didn’t expect anyone else was around here, wherever ‘here’ was. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing here, to be frank. He supposed he’d have to find out later, when the pain decided to stop.

It was several minutes later when he heard shouting coming near him that he decided it might be a good idea to get up, though try as he might he found he was unable. Might have had something to do with his neck being out of place, he thought. Someone more fragile might’ve died. As it stood, he was merely unable to move. So he stared up at the sky for a while longer, a strange sense of longing in his heart.

The first other person he saw was her, beautiful and smiling even as his broken, dirty body lay unmoving on the ground. “I’ve found him,” she said, waving over someone else. “I’ve found Tasedio.” How on earth could she know his name, he wondered? He’d never seen her before in his life. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him up, his body going limp in her arms. She groaned. “Oh, he’s snapped his neck. Roanah, is there anything you can do about that?”

A voice spoke up from behind him now, deeper and a bit louder despite being further away. “Of course, my friend,” and then there was another explosion of pain at the base of his neck as something impacted it from behind. After the heat died down, he found himself regaining feeling in the rest of his body, moving his fingers and soon his arms and legs. The woman let him down with a smile, and he smiled back. It seemed appropriate. 

“Thank you,” he said, looking at her and turning to find the one that had hit him enough to pop his neck back. There was a larger man than he standing a few feet away from him, smiling as well under his bushy moustache. “Both of you.” The woman nodded, taking his hand and walking over to the other man. He followed, walking along with her in silence for almost half a minute before she spoke up again.

“I’m Arasen,” she started, “this is Roanah, and you’re Tasedio. We’re like you. We don’t know where we came from, just that we fell from the sky one day and there were others that had done the same. We’re not like animals, because whenever we injure ourselves it heals as long as it’s got the ability to do so, but we don’t know what that makes us. We remember that whatever we were before, we didn’t have to eat or sleep then. Now we do. We’ve each got unique abilities, and we have no idea where we’re going. That’s the basic idea, I think. Did I miss anything, Ro?”

The large man nodded. “He’s the last one. There are no more of us.” Tasedio blinked, looking over at him, but he did not continue his statement.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” he asked, his voice wavering slightly. “I’m the last one… of you? How do you know?”

Arasen smiled at him, and that made him feel a little more at ease. “There’s seven of us, you see. Hirese can see the future, so he knew that you were going to be coming today. We’ve all got special abilities, though I don’t think he knows what yours were going to be. He only gets general ideas about the future, so he can’t interfere with it. Do you have any idea what you can do?”

Shaking his head, Tasedio looked up at the sky. “No idea. I just fell, and I’ve got no idea what I can do or how to do it. Sorry.”

“No, that’s alright.” Arasen’s smile widened. “I’m sure Atusiel can figure it out. That’s how we’ve been finding all of ours—he perfected his, so he’s using it to help us. He’s not always the nicest guy, but I think he’s trying and that’s what matters right now, especially since we just found you. We’re all going to have to get very used to each other for a while, I think.” Tasedio gave her a quizzical look, raising an eyebrow in confusion. She blinked at him in equal befuddlement, then said, “Oh. Right. We can’t die. You do know what death is, right?” He nodded, which made her smile. “That’s good. From what I hear, Lanadel didn’t when she first started out. I think we all forgot something important when we fell. And I’m pretty sure Hirese mentioned that yours would be your name, so I told you right off the bat. I don’t know what I’ve forgotten, though. I mean, it’d have to have been brought up for me to realize it.” She shrugged. “Shouldn’t be long before we get there.”

“I see it now,” Roanah said, pointing to a clearing ahead of them. “Should only take a little longer.” There were people moving around, though how many Tasedio couldn’t tell. “We can talk to Atusiel once we get there. I believe he stayed behind with Posurin so they could attend to him—“ here, he gestured at Tasedio— “once we found him. And so Pos could let everyone know they could come back since he’d been found. Can’t believe we did this soon.”

“Yeah, it is a bit weird, isn’t it?” Arasen remarked, blinking. “All the rest of us were a lot harder to find. I remember I must’ve been lying there for a day and a half before any of you could find me. But we watched you drop right out of the sky.” Here, Tasedio looked back up toward the sky, and Arasen laughed. “I know, it’s a little weird to feel so nostalgic about the sky. The longing will only last maybe ten or twenty years, though. Sounds like a long time, but it really isn’t when you don’t die. Roanah here’s been alive for… what, three hundred years now?”

“Two hundred eighty-nine,” he responded. “We’re here.”

The clearing was not particularly decorative, especially considering several people seemed to live there. There was a fire pit in the center, and a few crude-looking huts built around it, obviously made for no more than two people each. He supposed he’d have to build his own. In the central area near the fire pit, there were two dark-haired men, one with a thin moustache covering most of his upper lip. He seemed happier than the one without facial hair, who was holding a hand to his head and looked incredibly disappointed or frustrated based on his posture. “We found him,” Arasen announced, and both of them looked up. The one with the moustache stepped up first, holding out a hand for Tasedio to shake.

“Posurin,” he introduced himself. “Resident storyteller. You must be Tasedio. We’ve been looking forward to your arrival for some time now.” He looked back at the other man, who he motioned over. “Atusiel! Come on over. He’s not going to bite.”

“You don’t know that,” Atusiel said as he stood, giving Posurin a glare. “He is the Trickster, after all. He’s unpredictable.” 

Posurin rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You act like his title is a rigid definition of who he is. Anyway, this is Atusiel. He’s a bit rough around the edges, but we keep him around because he’s good with order. Helps us make sense of things here, sometimes, since we’re all so different.”

“Yes, of course,” Tasedio replied with a smile and a nod. “Good to meet you, Posurin, and Atusiel. I hope we’ll get along.”

“Atusiel,” Arasen spoke up, “he doesn’t have his powers either. Maybe you two can get acquainted over that.”

Exhaling heavily, as though cross with Tasedio’s very existence, Atusiel frowned as he spoke. “Fine. I’m warning you ahead of time—you’re not going to like it, moreso than the rest because you’re a being of chaos and restraint is the last thing you want, but it’s the only way we can figure things out. Come with me.” He gestured for Tasedio to follow, then walked toward one of the huts. There were two beds inside of it, one of which Atusiel sat down on and the other he motioned for Tasedio to do the same, to mirror him. Tasedio nodded, taking a seat and looking about as eager as he could. “Don’t look so excited,” Atusiel said, giving him a look. “You’re not going to enjoy this.”

“How do you know?” Tasedio asked. “You haven’t done it yet.”

There was a certain melancholy in the response. “None ever do.”

“Well, maybe I’ll be different,” Tasedio said, but only got a shake of the head in response.

“Let’s just get on with it,” Atusiel stated, his voice sounding defeated already before the procedure had even begun. He closed his eyes, presumably focusing his power, then opened them again and began to speak in a slightly different tone, one that Tasedio found to be very strange, but also very pleasant. “Lie down,” he said, and before Tasedio even had half an idea of what he was doing, he was already lying down on the bed. This might’ve been why others hadn’t liked it—the feeling of the loss of control over one’s own body was foreign, but somehow invigorating. He twitched his hand—so he still had some control over his actions, but whatever Atusiel ordered, presumably he had to do. This was going to be… well, he didn’t really know how it was going to be yet.

The next order came not long after. “Close your eyes.” Tasedio’s eyelids drifted shut, a slight smile on his face. His mind was already starting to feel very warm and numb from the commands, which he felt to be nice in a way. He didn’t really understand why others wouldn’t like this once it got to this point, at least. Then there was a hand on his shoulder and a hand on his forehead, applying a gentle pressure to him, presumably to keep him down when whatever was coming next would happen.

The next word was “Remember,” and his body was wracked with painful spasms before it went black.

 

“The bastard melted,” he heard Atusiel saying as he started to regain consciousness. “Just jumped away from my touch and fled. There’s no way he’s going to be able to get his full potential if that’s his first reflex.” His heart was pounding. It was dark, wherever he was, and he was curled up into a ball. Where the hell was he?

“What did you do?” Arasen’s voice carried through to wherever he was as well. “I don’t think he would’ve done it unprovoked.” Atusiel sighed, exasperated, and Tasedio unfurled himself and crawled out of his hiding place. He did not remember being quite so small. “Is that him?” She was far above him. But where was she? He couldn’t see her. Looking around, he found that he was definitely under the table. And it had definitely grown, or else he had shrunk. Perhaps that was someone else’s power.

“Yes, that is him,” Atusiel said, sounding just as fed up as Arasen. “Little ball of spines. Stabbed my hand when I tried to catch him. I just told him to remember, like I did for everyone else! I don’t understand why it wouldn’t work.” Arasen hummed thoughtfully, then offered up a response.

“Maybe his memories were different somehow. I don’t know. More painful? Blocked out? You’ll have to ask him.” A gigantic hand was lowered to Tasedio’s level, which he managed to crawl onto. He supposed it was probably Arasen, considering their conversation. Though he didn’t think he was a little ball of spines… hm. She brought him up to eye level, and he snuffled at her hand curiously. Wait, snuffled? He didn’t remember his nose being this long. Nor did he remember smelling things to identify them. He tried to relax, to allow himself to sit in Arasen’s hand without trouble, but he didn’t know how to change back from whatever he was. “Can you help him get back to his usual form?”

“Change back,” Atusiel ordered without much effort, and Tasedio found himself shifting very quickly back into his normal, much larger form. Nodding his thanks, he stretched his arms and legs and blinked rapidly at Atusiel.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” he started. “I didn’t want to make things difficult. It just sort of happened.”

“It’s fine,” the other man said, his tone biting. “We’ll try again some other time.” And they did, again, and again, and again. 

When Tasedio did remember some of what he had forgotten, he started to leave, fighting when he was stopped from doing so with vicious words no one had thought warranted. It was only for a short time at first, and they thought it might have been inspired by the Runner. But he continued to distance himself from the others, and no one knew why. No one, at least, except Posurin who would not tell. He continued to argue, mostly with Atusiel who he had taken a sudden hostility toward, and so Atusiel began to give himself reasons to hate Tasedio right back. The Trickster told Arasen of how much he wanted to escape, of why and how he would do it since she was the closest to him. But still he refused to tell her what was wrong, or how she could help him.

 

Naturally, she did not take kindly to this, and fought it until the end.

“Tas, wait!” Arasen called to the figure making his way into the woods. “Come on. Please don’t do this.”

“Don’t do _what?”_ the redhead spat back, stopping and turning to look at her. “Don’t get angry with someone for doing something they never should have done? Don’t get offended when you’re consistently called worthless and stupid and inferior, when you’ve proven time and time again that you aren’t? Don’t walk away from a poisonous situation that could be solved if you weren’t there? I’m sorry, Ara, but you’ll have to be more specific.” 

In the blink of an eye, she was right in front of him, giving him a frown. She put one hand on a shoulder, the other reaching up to play with his hair. “I know that you and Atusiel don’t get along, but—“

“We don’t get along.” Tasedio laughed. “We don’t get along. That’s rich. That, I believe, is the understatement of the day. Congratulations.” 

Arasen made a face at him, but stayed where she was. “But you don’t have to get all riled up about it. Eventually you’re going to have to accept that you are the youngest of us. You don’t have as much experience, and sometimes you do have to take him seriously. Hard as that might be for you, since you don’t seem like you’re really able to take anyone seriously.” Tasedio rolled his eyes and started to turn away, but found that Arasen had gotten a rather tight grip on his hair in the time that she’d been playing with it. “Look, you little brat,” she started, “I like you more than I like him. Most of us do. But you can’t go pulling something like this every time you get frustrated with him. We have to stick together. What if we lose you? I couldn’t live with myself.”

“If you lost me,” he replied, groaning, “then Posurin could just find me. Long-range telepathy. You could even keep track of me that way. And I could go on my merry way. I want to get out of here. I want to see places.” Tasedio managed to wrest himself from Arasen’s grip, then gave her a stern look. “At the very least, let me get away from everyone for a day. I’ll come back, I promise. But you need to talk to him about getting a sense of humor.” 

Arasen sighed. “Fine. But if you’re not back by sundown, you’re going to have to deal with the consequences.”

“Consequ—?” he started to ask, but Arasen had already vanished. He looked behind him, making sure he was heading in the right direction, then started running. If he remembered correctly, the perfect spot for what he wanted to do was down this path. And he was right. All too soon, the forest cleared out to reveal the edge of a ravine. Tasedio smiled, then took a running leap into the valley below. Any bystanders, had there been any at the time, would have been shocked at how effortlessly this man had apparently just committed suicide. Said bystanders would have been even more surprised when they saw a great winged beast fly up out of the ravine with little to no effort, turn its head toward the camp behind it, and soar off in the opposite direction.

When he returned in the same form, Arasen shook her head and laughed. Posurin congratulated him on his imagination and spent the meal inventing tales of the origin of the monster. Atusiel, though, was not pleased when Tasedio showed up to dinner that evening as a dragon.

Rather, Atusiel was furious. He enjoyed the calmness that the group had when Tasedio wasn’t around. No one was energetic or bouncing off the walls or even angry, so it seemed, save for perhaps Arasen who was always concerned and upset when the trickster wasn’t present. This irritated Atusiel to no end. So after this dragon escapade, he decided that it needed to stop.

As it would happen, he didn’t really need to cast Tasedio out. He did a fine job of that on his own. One morning, they awoke to find him missing, and Posurin would not speak of where he had gone. Arasen was a mess, as was to be expected, and Atusiel… well, if truth be told, he was a bit sad as well. Perhaps something deep inside of him had enjoyed having someone to argue with, a foil. This sentiment, of course, all wore off the second he came back about six months later with another person, the likes of whom they’d never seen before. It looked like them, spoke like them, yet there were only supposed to be seven. So what was this new being Tasedio had brought with him? Even Posurin could not create a tale for it. It was bizarre.

“I call it a human,” Tasedio said, smiling brightly as he had done before he had regained his memories. It was as though creating something had reawakened the happiness inside him. “I’ve got one more of them waiting. I found out that my power isn’t shapeshifting like I thought it was—it’s rearranging matter. So I made these things out of stuff from the forest! Isn’t it neat? They look like us, but they sort of act like monkeys. It’s a work in progress, of course, since that hadn’t been my intent, but it’s really difficult to give them any sort of intelligence at all and they each take so much energy and so much time to make that I don’t think I’ll be doing many more.”

“Did you give them genitals, Tasedio?” Atusiel asked, his head in his hands as though he could no longer contain his exasperation.

“Well… yes. I wanted them to be able to enjoy themselves when I leave them be, and I didn’t know what else would be appropriate.”

“Then you only needed to make the two.”

Tasedio blinked. “I suppose I hadn’t thought of that. They do have the ability to reproduce, don’t they… Hey! That means I could probably reproduce, if I—“

“I’m going to stop you right there,” said Atusiel. “That’s a conversation that I don’t wish to have. You need to release them into the wild. You can’t keep them as pets. They’re living beings.”

At this, the trickster laughed. “Says the one whose ability does exclusively that! I was planning on letting them go as soon as I’d showed you, anyway. They aren’t pets. Though I’ve thought about this new thing, like a miniature tiger… You know what, never mind. I don’t think you care. I’ll make sure they’re safe and cared for and I’ll keep an eye on them, but I won’t lord over them. I suppose that’ll be your job.” Glaring at Atusiel, he walked off, presumably to later return without his creations.

In the corner of the camp, observing the interaction, Hirese smiled.


	2. No matter how many breaths that you took you still couldn't breathe

“Tasedio, they are _everywhere._ ”

Atusiel sounded more exasperated than usual. “Hm?” he asked, rubbing his eyes as he sat up. This was a fine way to wake up: Atu already bitching at him at something he’d done. Wonderful. This was going to be a splendid day. He sighed to himself and blinked away the sleep. “What are you on about?”

“The humans. They’re a species now. They’ve reproduced past anything you could’ve anticipated and now they’re everywhere.”

“And you can control them, as you’ve found out during your experiments on the poor things. Just manipulate them, as you are wont to do, and let me go back to sleep.” He flopped back down and rolled over, mashing his face definitively into his bed. But Atusiel didn’t leave, despite Tasedio’s obvious lack of enthusiasm.

“They are driving us out of our home. That is the point I have been trying to make. They are everywhere and they are spreading. I can force them back for a while, but they will continue to reproduce and spread until they eventually run out of room. As I speak they are settling in our area. We will need to leave. They are xenophobic. Until we can appear as them, until we have sufficiently observed them, we must keep our distance. If we do not, they will surely imprison us.”

“Are you quite serious?” Tasedio asked, finally sitting up again and paying attention. “How would they imprison us? We are more powerful than they are. They could not hope to stand a chance.” Atusiel shook his head, turning toward the door.

“They have something we do not, something we will never have. They have numbers, and no matter how powerful we are, they may still overcome us.”

“Wait.” 

Atusiel stopped, turning back to face Tasedio. “What?”

There was a bit of a shake in his voice when he spoke. “Are we splitting up?”

It was then, for the first time, that Atusiel could not bear to face his fellow. “Yes,” he said, his voice low. “There is no other way. We may be able to meet up in the future, once we have learned how to blend in, but until then we must separate.”

“Then I’m sorry that I could never stop annoying you,” Tasedio replied, and threw his arms around his friend, squeezing as hard as he could manage for a few seconds before letting go. “Goodbye, Atu.”

Then he ran.

 

Tasedio was, naturally, the first to discover the most terrifying and dangerous thing about the humans. Posurin had been keeping them in touch with one another so they could know what was going on with relative ease. All the rest of them seemed to be much closer together physically, but that was neither here nor there—Tasedio had always been a bit of a loner, and it didn’t matter at the current time anyway. In fact, Tasedio was glad no one else was around. That way, no one could make fun of him when he was inevitably enslaved or killed. He wasn’t sure the humans could kill him, but if they could, he was sure they would find a way.

It had started out rather innocently, with him approaching a small group of people and trying to understand their customs and traditions. It had been several hundred years since he’d last had contact with them, and he wanted to know how they’d grown. He’d introduced himself, as had they, and then it had hit him like a sack of bricks. They invited him to do things, things he didn’t really want to do, but when they said his name, it sounded so exquisite and euphoric in ways it never had with his fellows that he couldn’t disagree. It was much like dealing with Atusiel when he used his abilities—the only answer was thoughtless compliance. Resistance was painful and ultimately futile, and they both made taking orders feel much better than it should’ve. This frustrated Tasedio, though he couldn’t call out for help from Posurin since his mind was currently being commandeered.

“You are very agreeable, Tasedio,” one of them said, and he nodded. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it wasn’t intended to be a command, but that didn’t matter right now. It was getting to the point where he didn’t mind taking orders from them. Every time he obeyed them, he got a rush of pleasure, and leaving or contacting the others would certainly stop that. Nothing truly bad had come of it so far, so why not continue?

“Where are you from? Tell us of your origin, of your lands.”

There was the kicker.

“I- I can’t,” he stammered, grinning and backing up a bit with his hands up in a gesture of peace. “You wouldn’t know them, very far away…” He took the moment of pause to send out a distress signal to Posurin, a call for help. “Very strange.”

“Oh, but they sound so interesting! You must tell us all about them, Tasedio!” they exclaimed, and another wave of pleasure silenced his mind instantly. It was peaceful in his mind, quiet, empty. Surely no harm could come of telling them about his people. He had to tell them. There was no choice.

“Well, the first was—“

“Tasedio!” a voice shouted, and this time it didn’t make him feel compliant in the slightest. This was strange considering the person it was coming from. “What are you doing here? We’ve been worried about you.”

The trickster very nearly addressed his former companion by his full name, but stopped himself before he did so. “Atu,” he said, “it’s good to see you again. These are just some people I’ve been talking to. They were just asking about you, actually.”

“And did you tell them anything?” he asked, giving Tasedio an accusatory look. 

“No. I’d just started when you arrived.” He scratched his head sheepishly, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “They’re, ah…” He swallowed, nervous. “Persuasive. Like you, a bit. More than a bit, really.”

Atusiel’s eyebrows shot up as he took Tasedio by the wrist. “We’re leaving. Now.”

“Look, I’d love to,” Tasedio replied, “but I, uh… I can’t. They won’t let me.”

“Won’t let you?” Atusiel scoffed, turning up his nose. “That is possibly the most pathetic excuse I’ve ever heard for not leaving.”

It was about at this point that the humans decided to speak up. “But he can’t leave,” one said, a female youth. “He’s only just showed up, and we were having fun. Weren’t we, Tasedio?” He’d never felt so much regret in his life as he felt the compliance wash over him, forcing him to nod in front of Atusiel.

“Yes,” he said, his voice flat. “I can’t leave.” Atusiel tugged at his wrist again, but this time he moved even less than before, frozen in place by the half-command given to him by the young girl.

“Come on,” Atu growled under his breath, but Tasedio only gave him a blank stare in response. Sighing, he focused for a moment, then looked back at his companion. “We are leaving,” he restated, his voice suddenly compelling, “right now.”

Something cracked inside of Tasedio. The conflict of commands both required him to move and would not allow him to, and they must have been about equal in strength for he could not let either dominate him. He felt as if he were detached from his body, watching his own eyes turn glassy and a slight, crazed smile break out on his face as he froze in place. He was definitely not experiencing this. Atusiel grabbed his body’s wrist and tugged again, and his whole body seemed to go limp and collapse. He was still frighteningly aware of everything around him, but he wasn’t able to communicate with his body, nor was he apparently able to stand. He watched as Atusiel apologized to the group, then slung the limp body over his shoulder and struggled his way back to his own tiny camp.

Putting Tasedio’s body down on his own bed, Atusiel then got to work trying to awaken him. “Are you in there?” he asked, and Tasedio wanted to say that he was, but couldn’t seem to connect his words to his throat. The manipulator started to panic, his eyes wide as he shook his former companion. “Get up, Tasedio. Get up. You have to. They’re going to think I killed you.” Mentally, Tasedio narrowed his eyes. He’d known Atusiel to be callous, but not this much. The other did look worried, though. Clearing his throat, he finally seemed to get an idea. “Obey me, and only me.” Tasedio blinked once, twice, then shuddered. 

“I don’t want to,” he replied, his voice small. He was resisting more than he’d ever been able to, but still wasn’t able to stop himself from letting out a small whimper of fear. “Please don’t force me to.” It was astounding, though, that such a command had thrown him back into the moment faster than he could’ve anticipated.

Atusiel reached out to him, shushing him and stroking his hair, his voice retaining its odd, soothing quality. “It’s alright, Tasedio. I’m not going to harm you. The others have abandoned you, besides. Arasen could’ve come to save you much easier than I, but she chose to leave you to the humans. She doesn’t care about you. She is allying more strongly with Posurin, besides. They are becoming a… a bit of a thing. They’ve kissed now.” Tasedio didn’t question any of what Atusiel was telling him. He’d started out with something that made sense, gained Tas’ trust, and now he couldn’t help it. Rage and pain festered in his chest, and he held back his emotions as he sat up.  “I aided you, and I will help you more than they ever could,” Atusiel continued. “Just give me your mind and I will make certain that you are safe. I will make it alright.”

“You promise?” Tasedio asked, looking at his companion with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “You won’t let me get into danger like that again?”

“They can’t control you using your name if you’ll only obey me, Tasedio,” Atusiel replied with a laugh, ruffling his hair. “I’m not forcing you to, but I think you and I would both be much better off if you did join me.”

“One last question,” he said as Atu continued to smile at him. “Where’s Lanadel?”

Atusiel shook his head. “Off somewhere. We were supposed to split up, you know. Posurin and Arasen didn’t listen, but the rest of us did and we haven’t come across each other much since then. Posurin won’t tell me her exact location, of course, so I haven’t been able to talk to her in private. The only reason he disclosed yours was because he wanted to keep you away from him and knew I wouldn’t go near him. But we’re going to confront him, Tasedio, if that is what you wish, and if you give me control.”

“Yes,” Tasedio murmured, nodding. “I want to confront them about this. If Arasen doesn’t like me…” He swallowed, his face twisting with grief. “Then I suppose that’s fine. But I’d rather she tell me to my face, rather than lead me on like she’s done and then do… this.” Looking up, he made eye contact with Atusiel and sighed. “Just do it. Take this pain away.”

“Wonderful,” replied Atusiel.

 

Life had never been so simple, so peaceful for Tasedio in all his memory.

For the next few days, he would just wake up and talk to Atusiel about what they planned to do, about what they’d do after that, about themselves, about everything they could think of. They just sat and talked and ate and relaxed so they’d be in good shape for what they were about to do. It was very nice after having been on the move for so long. Tasedio didn’t like running anymore. Staying here where it was calm and quiet seemed like a much better idea. If he wanted to curl up in a ball and just sleep all day, Atusiel didn’t stop him. If he wanted to go out of the camp, he was only asked to be back as soon as he could. Being controlled was so much more freeing than he’d ever imagined it would be. All of the important decisions were made for him, so he never had to worry.

It must’ve been the others, Tasedio thought. Atusiel was so calm and non-confrontational. But then, perhaps, it might’ve been _him_ that had been at fault. Now that he was safe and under Atusiel’s control, he was much more agreeable. He wasn’t sure what had been so wrong with him before that he’d always argued with everyone. It didn’t matter now, though. The others were the ones causing problems, not him. All he needed to do was follow Atusiel’s directions, and everything would be alright.

But here they were now, confronting Arasen. She was playing dumb, pretending she didn’t know what they were talking about. The rage burned in Tasedio’s eyes as he spoke. “I know you don’t love me, but you could’ve at least said it to my face,” he growled, walking toward her. She would always glance back, as if to make sure she still had somewhere to go if she could no longer handle it. 

Tasedio thought that was funny. Of course she’d run away. That was all she ever did.

“Who told you that?” she asked, obviously feigning her sorrow. “Was it Atusiel? You know he lies and manipulates! That’s all he’s ever done! Why would you let yourself fall to him? You’re not stupid, Tas.”

“Silence!” he demanded, his voice rising. “He helped me when you wouldn’t. You and Posurin would’ve left me at the mercy of the humans! You would’ve let them have their way with me, no matter what that was! I could’ve been enslaved for life and you wouldn’t have thought to aid me!”

“You _are_ enslaved!” she shouted back. “Atusiel’s got you in his grip and you don’t even realize it! I was the one who brought him over there in the first place! The camp he took you to was mine! I was going to bring you out, but he insisted that he be the one to get you out of there and wouldn’t let me follow. Then he kicked me out of my own damn camp and made me live in his!” She stepped forward, holding Tasedio’s face and making sure he didn’t look away. “Please listen to me. I love you, but I don’t love you so much that I won’t leave you if you’ve decided to side with that asshole. I’m not going to get with Posurin, because we’ve never been more than friends. I’d hate to be your enemy, but if you’re going to be a twit, I don’t have a choice.”

Tasedio bit his lip. “I don’t know. Do you… do you have any idea how good this feels?” His breath was shaky as he let it out, then drew in another slowly. “Not arguing with you. Being controlled, not having to make your own decisions. It’s very soothing. I feel like I’m a better person like this.” Cracking a weak smile, he continued. “I don’t want to get on your bad side, Ara. You’re too close to me for that to be desirable. But this is who I am now, at least for now. I am the Trickster, ever-changing. Don’t expect this to last too long.”

Even as the words left his mouth, he felt a sting in his mind. Clutching his forehead, he sank to the ground. Things had been getting murky, but they were clearing up again. He shook his head, sitting up and looking at Arasen. “So I’m guessing this means you’re not with us. Ugh. I hardly remember anything that’s just happened. Did we talk about Posurin? That was something I definitely wanted to discuss with you.”

But Arasen wasn’t paying attention. “Atusiel!” she shouted, running around the area. “Atusiel, you coward, show yourself! Can’t you see what you’re doing to him?” 

Tasedio was confused. Surely they’d just been talking about her abandoning him? “What are you talking about?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her as he remained on the ground. “I’m fine.” 

She ignored him, running around as if frantic. “I’ll make you wish you could die!” she shouted, and Tasedio felt a presence at his back.

“We should go,” whispered Atusiel. “I feel she’s very… angry. Perhaps she feels the pain you felt when she betrayed you.”

“I hope so,” Tasedio replied with a nod. “Maybe then when she has remorse for it, we can be friends again.”

Atusiel took a breath, as if to speak, then shook his head and looked down. “Yes. Perhaps.” He took Tasedio by the wrist, leading him out of the clearing. Tas was quite intrigued that Arasen didn’t seem to notice that the man she was looking for was right in plain sight the whole time. Perhaps Atu had used his cleverness and his powers to evade her perception, he thought.

It was some time before he spoke with any of the others again. He and Atusiel spend a great deal of time together, with Atusiel learning nearly all there was to learn about Tasedio. What he liked, what he didn’t like… Everything was open to him, and Tas was happy to provide him with the information. He talked about how he didn’t like being so naïve, so easy to manipulate. He always seemed to think that people had the best intentions, and they exploited him so much, and it upset him. He was grateful that Atusiel wasn’t treating him like this, and he said so, but when he did, Atu seemed to look a bit sad. So he changed topics.

They conversed at great length for a very long time until one day, Atusiel went missing. He wasn’t sure why or how, only that he felt strangely hollow without anyone around to command him. So he sat and waited for Atusiel to return. He was waiting maybe three days when he fell unconscious in the middle of the day without warning. When he woke, he was restrained and facing Arasen. Panic coursed through his system as he wondered what they were going to do to him, to Atusiel.

“Well, this was unexpected,” he said, pretending to brush it off. “I knew you had some sort of plans to get rid of me. Go ahead. Do your worst. I won’t tell you where Atusiel is, I don’t know.” Mentally, he tried to contact him, but to no avail—Posurin was paying attention to what was being communicated, and stopped it dead before it reached its intended target.

“You idiot.” Arasen buried her face in her hands. “We’re going to break his hold on you. Now hold still.”

Tasedio, of course, did not want to hold still. He squirmed and thrashed, but something held him in place very tightly. As Atusiel and a small girl were brought into the room, he grew more and more confused. “You were the ones who took him?” he asked. “How’d you get him to stay docile and not come find me? Whenever humans got close, he’d ask me to get rid of them. I assumed he’d do the same for you.”

“He almost did,” Arasen replied. “We stopped him from contacting you. It did take us a while to get him completely under control where he wouldn’t be trying to manipulate us, but when we got it, we took you here so that we could fix things.”

“Who’s we,” Tasedio asked, “and why are you doing this? We were working just fine.”

Arasen rolled her eyes and ignored the first question. “Allowing Atusiel to enslave one of us is just wrong. We all agreed that letting you go was the right thing to do. Well, except Lanadel, but I haven’t seen her in ages. Posurin knows where she is, but he says she doesn’t want to be disturbed. Needs some private time, I guess.” Sighing, she circled around to Tasedio’s other side. “Now then.” She looked over at the little girl and nodded, then stepped back.

The girl seemed like she was quite young, and it disgusted Tasedio that they would use a child that doesn’t know what it’s saying yet in order to use Atusiel in that way. “Atusiel,” she said, her voice small and hopeful. As she did, Atu’s expression went from one of fear and bitterness to the purest calm Tasedio had ever seen on someone’s face. He knew that feeling. He couldn’t blame Atu for succumbing so quickly, either. He’d done the same thing. “Please release Tas from your control.”

Tasedio noted, very quickly, that she hadn’t used his whole name—probably on purpose, considering the power it had—just before he realized what the little girl was saying. Squirming, he tried to escape his seat, but he was still held tight even as Atusiel said something he didn’t quite listen to.

Then all of it just stopped. His desire to get away, his ties to Atu, his bitterness toward Arasen and Posurin—all of it faded as he sat and blinked. “What just happened?” he asked, looking between his two companions that were present and the girl. “Arasen? What’s going on? Where are we?” He felt dizzy.

“Are you okay?” She seemed concerned.

Tasedio blinked. “Ask me again when the room stops spinning.”

Arasen put her hands on his shoulders. “Listen to me, Tas,” she said, shaking him a bit. “You’re free now. You don’t have to listen to Atusiel.”

Frowning, Tasedio focused on her. “I did want it, though, Ara,” he said under his breath. “I need safety right now, security, company. I can’t be alone to make my own decisions. I’ve only gotten into trouble while I was alone. Please don’t make him leave. I don’t think I can do this, not yet.”

Arasen sighed as her hands travelled down his arms and rubbed them softly, trying to comfort him. “Shh,” she intoned, her voice similarly small. “I’ll stay with you if you need someone around. I can hang around and tell you what to do if you can’t function on your own.”

He smiled, nodding. “Please do. I’m sorry this happened, that I let myself succumb to him. I’d really like to spend more time around you. I’ll go wherever you want. It’ll be like an adventure.”

“Yeah.” She stepped around him, and he felt his bindings release. “I need to talk to Lanadel, and she doesn’t want anyone else’s input but mine. Obviously Posurin is going to hear too, so I don’t think she’ll mind if you listen, but you can’t engage in the conversation. I’m not sure she wants to see anyone else right now. I don’t know, I’ll have a chat with her. That’s not for a little while, though. Let’s get out of here first.” Arasen took his hand as he stood, and before he could blink, they were gone, off to their new destination.


	3. No matter how many nights that you'd lie wide awake to the sound of the poison rain

He doesn’t like showing you everything all at once, so you take a break after that. It’s a break longer than you would’ve liked, lasting several days. He spends much of this time doting on you and making sure you’re comfortable. You’re not sure why, but you enjoy it. He’s doing a very good job of keeping you calm and safe. It brings the events of only a year ago back into your mind—when you were so afraid of him, when you ran away and tried to tell everyone about what he was doing. You’re glad he stopped you now, though. Things are better this way. There is peace throughout the world, all united in their love for him. He makes a fine ruler, you think, and you are very glad he chose you to stand beside him.

When next he shows you his memories, he seems afraid, like you might do something strange after you see this part. You remind him you’ve heard it all before, and he reminds you that hearing about something and seeing it are not the same thing. Still, you sit down with him again, and he lets you watch as his life plays before his eyes once more.

 

“Arasen. It’s been too long.”

The blonde had a wonderfully attractive voice, matching that of her immaculate appearance. It had been a very long time since Tasedio had seen her, and he’d almost forgotten how pretty she was. She smelled divine. This was likely why, upon their arrival, she’d had to send away several men in order to preserve their privacy.

Under different circumstances, Tasedio might’ve thought it demeaning to pretend to be a hair accessory, simply because he wasn’t allowed to be himself and participate in the conversation. But, unfortunately, there were few other ways he could have listened without providing input. He remained motionless, as inanimate objects often do, while he examined Lanadel’s new appearance.

Her hair cascaded down to her shoulders, tumbling over the strange, half-revealing tunic she wore. He’d never seen anything like it before. Then again, he’d never been in this area—“Hellas,” Arasen had called it—and he supposed it was related to the location. She was a bit luminescent in a way he didn’t remember her being, and her scent was stronger than usual. Sending a message through Posurin, Tasedio asked Arasen if she could ask what had happened. Arasen nodded, just a bit, not enough for Lanadel to notice.

“It has,” she replied, embracing her friend. “You’ve changed. What’s going on?”

Lanadel’s laugh was melodic, her smile enchanting. “I’ve been going around, checking up on humans and figuring out how they form cultural beliefs. Their ideas about how the world was created are really interesting. It’s splendid, Ara. I’ve spent centuries, maybe even a millennia or two with these people specifically. It’s been so long and I’ve had a lot of time to figure out things for myself, like the name problem and… well, this.” She gestured down at herself, at her tunic and glow. “These people call me Aphrodite. They worship me as a god. The strangest part is that it somehow gives me strength. It gives me power. My own abilities have grown stronger, I am starting to be able to mimic others, and my senses have all increased.”

She glanced up at Arasen’s accessory, at Tasedio, then turned her gaze back down to the other woman. “I can tell where we all are in relation to me. I feel like I can sense life itself flowing through me, using me as its vessel to shape these people as it pleases. The worship fills this hole in me I’ve had for so long, the hole we all seem to have. You should give it a try. It’s long-term invigoration. It’s truly living, Arasen.”

Tasedio was absolutely enraptured by the idea. Atusiel’s control had filled the void for a time, but the others hadn’t enjoyed that too much. This could be a plausible alternative. While they had all been out fooling around, Lanadel had discovered some of the secrets about them, the secrets of the world. He wanted to stay here now, to learn these secrets. Staying attentive, he hoped they would continue speaking.

“Can I tell anyone else?” Arasen asked, biting her lip.

“Well, if you couldn’t, I hardly would’ve allowed your little accessory past the guards.” Plucking it from her hair, Lanadel smiled. “And how are you doing, Tas? I heard Atusiel wasn’t quite kind to you. I’ll have to have a chat with him about how to treat others.” She made a disdainful noise. “Such a petulant child, Atusiel. Anyway,” she continued, tossing him into the air, “I don’t mind these two—Posurin and Tasedio—knowing, but I wouldn’t tell any of the other boys. They’re all so power-hungry, and I fear it might go to their heads.”

Tasedio, who had turned back into himself mid-air and had landed on his backside, blinked and stood up, dusting himself off. “Hirese is power-hungry?” he asked. “I mean, Roanah and Atusiel, I can understand, but Hirese? He keeps to himself for the most part, doesn’t he?”

Lanadel giggled. “I suppose you can’t feel it in him. It’s only because I have a bit of my own on reserve and because of my enhanced powers that I can tell.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about,” Arasen said. “You’re being vague.”

“His insanity,” the blonde said with a grin. “We’ve all got a touch of it, but his is growing and I can sense it because of my enhanced abilities.” She looked down at Tasedio, blinking. “Keep a close eye on this one,” she stated, looking back to Arasen. “His is on the rise as well, growing far faster than Hirese’s.”

 _“Me?”_ Tasedio asked, his tone bordering on accusatory.

“I presume it’s because of what Atusiel did to you,” she replied. “It’s made you hyper-aware of the fact that you’re missing something and you’re reaching out in any way you can find to fill that hole in yourself. Hirese’s insanity is of a very different nature and couldn’t be solved by a small stint as a god.” Her eyebrows raised. “I feel it would do you both some good, you and Arasen. You should give it a try, maybe together.”

“Maybe,” Arasen said, seeming distracted. “This whole Hirese thing makes me nervous. Is there any way we can stop it?”

“He’s not too far from here,” Lanadel said. “You could go check up on him, or at least keep an eye on him for a while.”

Tasedio nodded. “I’d like to do that. I mean, I’d like to do this whole god thing, but after we make sure Hirese is okay.”

“That’s probably for the best,” the blonde replied. “In that case, you might want to get on your way. Who knows what kind of damage he can do unsupervised… Just don’t let him know you’re there, alright? Or, if you do, make sure it’s early on so that he forgets you’re around and focuses more on his visions. You’re a shapeshifter, Tas. You can pretend to be someone else, if things go badly.”

Arasen shrugged. “I think it’d be better if we were upfront with him and revealed ourselves right away. Then, like you said, if things get bad, Tas can pretend to be someone else and maybe take care of it.” Offering her hand to Tasedio, she smiled. “Do you want to go now?”

“I don’t see why not.”

 

Tasedio rather liked how much they were traveling, now that he thought about it. Seeing all that the world had to offer was invigorating and new and _different,_ and if he said he didn’t like the constant change he’d be lying. For now, though, they were staying in Rome, where Hirese resided. They’d been there for a while now, and while they had intended to speak with him as soon as they’d arrived, they had found that it was much harder to find him than they had first bargained for. Asking Posurin for help was almost out of the question, since he had no desire to go against the wishes of others to stay undetected. It was a very long time before they did finally come upon him, and when they did, they didn’t recognize him at first.

Hirese was a wreck. Even as he croaked out his warning about some day in March that Tasedio didn’t happen to catch, he sounded as if he were about to collapse at any moment. When he started to leave, the pair took it as a good time to approach him. “Hirese?” Tasedio whispered. “Is that you?”

“How do you—“ There was a pause for a moment, then a dawn of recognition as they made eye contact. “Ah. It’s you.” He seemed… distant. Bitter, perhaps. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re here to check up on you,” Tasedio replied cheerily. “To make sure you’re doing alright.”

“I’m fine,” he responded, his voice gruff as he turned. This concerned the shapeshifter to no end. Was this what Lanadel had been speaking of?

“You don’t seem fine. Are you okay?” he asked, concern coating his voice. He was fairly certain that he wasn’t sounding quite as sympathetic as he’d intended, though, not with the tone Hirese was giving him.

“I have seen far too much of your face in recent days to ever want to see it again,” Hirese spat. “Leave me be.”

“What?” Tasedio asked. “We haven’t seen each other in years.”

“No, but the visions of you never stop,” he retorted. “You’re going to be the ruin of us all, Trickster. You will destroy everything important to you.”

Startled by the seer’s prophecy, Tasedio took in a shaky breath. “You don’t mean that. I don’t know what I’ve done to you, but I’m sorry.”

Hirese gritted his teeth and spun around to face Tasedio once more. “You don’t have any idea what it’s like to live as me. To see these things and to have no one believe you. You don’t know what it’s like to fear death, Tasedio. To know it is fast approaching and to be able to do nothing to change this future fate has woven for you. Perhaps someday you will know what it is like to see your future, to know every terror you will commit, to know how mad you will become. Perhaps someday you will know how I live.”

Tasedio was horrified. He had never wanted to hurt anyone. Maybe play a few tricks once in a while, but never harm. More importantly, Hirese had said his death was approaching, and this worried him. “Do you want us to protect you?” he asked. “Perhaps our intervention would change things. Perhaps we can avert your fate.”

Sighing, Hirese looked at Arasen. “You should not stay much longer. You are only putting yourself in danger.”

Arasen, too, sighed. “I know,” she replied. “But at least I’m delaying the inevitable. Maybe it won’t come to pass in its entirety if I stay.”

“What?” Tasedio asked, but was ignored.

“You cannot fight the future, Arasen,” Hirese said, shaking his head. “I have tried.”

“Is there anything I can do to help him? To help us?” she asked, but he shook his head again, turning and starting to leave. She looked over at Tasedio, who looked mortified. “Don’t worry about it,” she reassured him, but her voice was weak. “It’ll be fine.”

“Fine?” Laughing sourly, he gestured to Hirese as he walked away. “He just told you that you’re putting yourself in danger by staying. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Does he mean with _me?_ Why does everyone seem to think I’m a threat? What have I done to hurt any of you?” He shook his head and snorted. “I can’t believe you all hated me, thought me dangerous for so long and never told me.”

“We don’t hate you,” she responded. “But I won’t deny that we think you’re dangerous. You can reshape matter, Tas. That’s dangerous.”

“And you can teleport anywhere. That’s dangerous too,” he retorted, which only got an eyeroll from Arasen.

“You know what I meant. Other than Atusiel, you’ve got the most dangerous powers, and you’re the one who was said to—“ She bit off the end of her sentence, shaking her head. “Never mind. You know what? Let’s just hang out here for a while and make sure we get this whole Hirese thing taken care of. Then you won’t have to worry about it anymore, okay? Every question you have will be answered.” 

Though he felt he should press the matter further, Tasedio decided instead to leave it. If she wasn’t serious and didn’t intend to answer his questions after this ordeal, he could take more drastic action, but right now there was little he could do about it anyway. Hirese needed to be aided, and he needed to figure out what the hell was going on.

It seemed as if they were in Rome for a very long time, and by anyone else’s standards they were. Arasen kept trying to help keep Tasedio from getting bored, but when every day dragged on so long it felt like a year all its own, things got very tiring very quickly. All things considered, they were doing a poor job of supervising Hirese as well, having not so much as made contact with him since the first time. They were trying to remain quiet and obscure so he might forget they were there with all he had on his mind, but after a while Tasedio started to think they were doing it a little too well. So, after perhaps fifty years, Tasedio started to experiment with who he was in this society.

In essence, it was less an experiment on who he was as it stood on how others reacted to this. He went all over the scale, resting for about a month on each; he moved from wealth to poverty, as many races as he could find, and any and all sexualities he could come up with. He’d just started moving into other religions—he’d decided to start with the budding one, Christianity—when everything had gone down.

Hirese, he noted, had cleaned up a great deal since the last time Tasedio had seen him, so much so that he was almost unrecognizable. He wasn’t certain why he would want himself elevated to the position of emperor, what with their blatant weakness completely available to anyone who could somehow pry the information from him—not to mention they would get very, very concerned when he somehow never died. Tasedio hoped that Hirese would be a decent emperor rather than a repeat of Caligula. It’d certainly be awkward if an ambush similar to Caesar occurred, as well, what with all the confused senators trying to stab him and somehow not killing him. He giggled for a bit before he realized how frighteningly morbid it was to laugh at such a serious matter and stopped before someone in the crowd thought him insane for having a fit in public.

Of course, most of what Hirese did, Tasedio never would’ve seen coming. 

 

“He’s trying to kill me.” The desperation in Tasedio’s voice was clear as day, his arm outstretched and pointed toward Hirese. “I promise you that he is doing this in order to see me dead. I had just started going into Christianity, and then he starts hanging them up and burning them, persecuting them in any way he finds possible. I know we’re not capable of dying—but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s trying, and that’s _rude!_ What did I do?”

The others in the circle looked expectantly at the recipient of the accusation, but Hirese gave no answer, only an icy glare. “Are we going to handle this with any sort of civility?” he asked, his face twitching slightly. “I would prefer we actually have some sort of system in place rather than just one man making wild claims.”

“That is as I suggested,” Atusiel responded. “I propose that all of us, when collected in this manner, refer to ourselves as the Council of Seven, or simply the Council. Whenever we run into a problem amongst ourselves, one that we wish not to involve the humans in, we will resolve it here. We will refer to ourselves as such and treat one another with the utmost respect whenever a meeting is held. We cannot hold a meeting with a member missing, and it is an area of truce, a middle ground for all parties involved should we be in conflict. Does everyone find that agreeable?” Tasedio didn’t see why it needed to be named, though he supposed they didn’t have a collective name otherwise. Finding everything else to be reasonable, he nodded along with the rest of the group. “Good,” Atusiel continued. “Now then… I suppose it would be best to have Posurin preside over the proceedings. He is the least biased, after all.”

Posurin stood, running his hands over the smooth stone in front of them. “Alright. I already know the scenario, but for the benefit of the rest of us… what is the problem we’re having here? Hirese, you’re the accused. We’ll start with you.” He gestured over to the seer, taking a seat again. Hirese blinked, clearing his throat and lifting his chin.

“I have seen my demise,” he stated. “It is hazy, as with everything, but I will undeniably be dying in the next decade. I do not know how or why. I know only that Tasedio will be somehow involved, that he will be my downfall and the downfall of everyone around him. He will be our ruin. I was merely taking it upon myself to end him before he could do so. I feel my reasoning is sound and my motivation is just.”

Nodding, Posurin then gestured to Tasedio. “And why do you believe this is invalid? Why do you find this irrational?”

“I thought we were a group,” Tas squeaked, mortified. “Sort of a team. I thought we were important to each other. I’m not trying to kill him! Quite the opposite, as he’s admitted. The only reason I was around him in the first place was because I was told he was going insane, and now I see why! His visions have driven him to try to kill those who pose a threat to him. Who’s to say that, should he be allowed to continue, he won’t start having the same visions about all of you and try to kill you? What if he’s seen something very different from what he’s telling us and his insanity has warped it beyond recognition?” 

He looked down at the table, trying to keep his breathing steady. He was scared they’d side with Hirese, and he really didn’t want to die feeling so empty or alone. Hiding his hands under the table to mask their shaking, he continued as he looked up once more. “Most of all, what if he’s out and out _wrong?_ We don’t know how these powers work, and his are the least reliable—none of us can really see its effects, can we? There’s no way of knowing how he functions. I don’t think he can pass the kind of judgment that would end one of our lives. If you all think you should get rid of me, that’s fine, but I’d like for everyone to agree on it, not just having one person act independently.”

Posurin nodded. “I believe they’re both fair arguments. Now, how do we handle the subject of discussing the matter with them without the other hearing? I would like to give them both equal weight with us so that we don’t make a blind judgment.”

“If I may,” Roanah suggested, “we could have Atusiel handle it. He is adept at making sure individuals do or do not do something.”

“A valid point,” Posurin said. “I believe that would be the best way to handle it at this time. Atusiel, I will allow you to make the judgment on whom you believe should be spoken with first.” Tasedio took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was almost certain that Atusiel would not want to see him around much longer and would give Hirese preference—they were similar in some ways, after all.

True to his assumptions, Atusiel did make the decision to hear Hirese first. “I’d like to discuss with him the perceived danger in keeping Tasedio around,” he said, and Tas noticed the slight emphasis on the uncertainty in his sentence. “At least, before we discuss that with the trickster himself.” 

“It is your decision,” Lanadel said, her voice lilting and sweet yet with a prominent bored undertone. “Can you go ahead and pursue that line of action, then? I have other things to be doing right now and I’d very much like to get back to them.”

“Of course, darling,” he replied, and Tasedio saw the small smile on Atu’s lips as he opened his eyes again. Was he really capable of love? Or were they just manipulating each other? Did they interact regularly? How open was their relationship? More importantly, how would Arasen take Tas's own death were it to happen? Would she be devastated? They were close friends, after all, and—

His thoughts were interrupted by a clearing of the throat and a terse interjection from Atusiel, his voice taking on a familiar and soothing tone. “Sleep, Tasedio,” and his mind stopped in its tracks, sinking like a stone into the depths of oblivion.

There were usually no dreams in oblivion, Tasedio had noted. But once in a great, great while, they would turn up uninvited. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances, one couldn’t force oneself to wake up if it went badly, nor to stay asleep if it was going well when they woke. Tas was usually more than happy to just stay peacefully in the darkness, motionless and silent, letting himself take a breather, a rest. This was fortunately the case on this occasion, and he found himself basking in the darkness until he was once more summoned up from it. “Tas,” he was addressed as he tried to blink away the sleep, “we’ve spoken with Hirese and now we would like to talk to you.” It was Posurin speaking, he realized.

“Alright,” he said, rubbing his eyes some more. “Just give me a moment. I was down pretty deep, I think.”

Atusiel laughed. “Of course you were very much gone—that was the intent. Good to see I did my job well, at least.” Tas yawned, stretched a bit, then looked around.

“Did Hirese leave?” he asked, looking over at one of the two empty spots at the table. “Did you dismiss him once you got his idea? And I suppose Arasen took him back.”

Atusiel started to speak, but Posurin cut him off. “We could not sedate him, so we were forced to dismiss him.”

Tasedio’s eyes widened. “What? You… you couldn’t sedate him? That is to say, Atusiel couldn’t do anything?”

“No, I couldn’t, damn it!” Atusiel shouted, slamming his hands on the table as he stood up, looming over Tasedio. “He’s gone so insane that his mind is beyond all comprehension or hope. It’s a damn miracle he can even make sense of his thoughts, let alone talk! It’s so chaotic, it’s impossible to impose order on… it’s worse than yours.”

Tas looked to Posurin for confirmation on this point and got a nod in return. “It’s true. Your mind is utter chaos—a flurry of thoughts that I can only occasionally make sense of, though I’m certain you do a fine job based on your exemplary social skills and demonstrated processing capabilities—but his is to the point where he should not be able to function. There is nothing that can sort him out. He is beyond reason. He did make a compelling case against you, though, and if he weren’t completely insane, we might’ve had a tougher decision.”

“And what was your decision?” he asked, looking around the table. Atusiel and Posurin seemed very invested in the conversation, whereas Roanah and Lanadel looked incredibly bored. He supposed that they didn’t really care about the outcome, or that they had other things on their mind. Arasen popped back into her seat, looking a bit winded, then shook her head as if to tell him that they would discuss the matter later. 

“We’ve decided that you, as our resident shapeshifter, would find it the easiest to infiltrate the ranks of his close guard and capture him in some way in order to neutralize him. He never would have agreed to such matters here, and this is a neutral zone besides. We want him to see that you mean him no harm and that he will be safe. If you are capable of healing him, do so. And if you can at all help it, do not kill him. I don’t know how you’d manage, but…”

“He’d manage,” Atusiel said under his breath, rolling his eyes.

Tasedio shook his head. “So, let me see if I’m understanding this correctly. You’ve decided that it’s my problem and so I should deal with it by going on a suicide mission. Is that the short version?”

Posurin tried to protest, but Lanadel interjected, “Basically. But we believe in you more than we believe in him. He’s got nothing going for him.”

“Oh, yes, because I can win simply based on you all believing in me. I’m going to get myself killed.” Sighing, Tasedio stood and turned away from the group, massaging his temples in exasperation. “Wonderful.”


	4. Where did you go, where did you go, where did you go

With the assurance that all would be revealed to him on his standing as “dangerous” after he neutralized Hirese, Tasedio left the Council along with Arasen to begin formulating a plan. Unfortunately, neutralizing a threat from someone who could see the future was approximately as difficult as one would expect it to be. Any time he even made so much as a step toward Hirese in order to talk him down or something of the like, he would be foiled by what at first seemed like circumstance but under careful scrutiny was in fact planned by his rival. The seer always seemed to be three steps ahead of him, and his fury at being stopped in his tracks again and again only continued to grow as time passed. The longer he went with no results, the more Tasedio almost wanted to kill him. He shouldn’t let himself think like that, he would scold himself, because then he might actually do it, but… would that be so bad? He hated the conflict in his mind, though part of him suspected this may have been exactly what Lanadel was referring to when she had said his sanity was dwindling. In that case, why were they trusting him to neutralize a rogue member of their people?

The opportunity presented itself shortly after Hirese had apparently decided to have a young man castrated and then married him—dressing him up in his late wife’s garb and pretending that the poor boy was the empress—and started dealing with tax rebellions. His secretary, Epaphroditos, had uncovered a conspiracy against him and had grown very wealthy and favored, and Tasedio thought it might be good to somehow get said secretary out of the way so that Tas might take his place, if only momentarily. This would be difficult, he thought, as he had no power over the mind, but he could certainly try to manage.

And manage he did, with flying colors. He observed said secretary for several months before making a move, making certain he had a good grasp on who he was and what he was doing. Though he was not a perfect replica of the original (who Tasedio kept locked away and taken care of for the duration of the period), Hirese was wrapped up in his own matters most of the time, and Tasedio was passable enough to not be discovered. Hirese fell deeply into despair and began talking frequently of suicide, in order to escape the disdain and even hatred of those around him. Recalling that he was meant to bring him back to the Council alive, Tasedio urged Hirese to keep himself alive, and thought he might have his opportunity when Hirese urged him to come along with several others—one of whom was the young man he had married—on a journey to collect his thoughts at the villa of another while in disguise. Tasedio constantly tried to get them alone, but Hirese would repeatedly make it so that there was at least one other in the area. Tas guessed it was his paranoia. Regardless, he and the three others were abruptly ordered to dig a grave upon reaching the villa, and Tasedio feared he may not have missed his chance. When a courier came with news that Hirese was to be executed, he made his final choice and tried to kill himself.

Records in later times would tell of how he could not bring himself to perform the act and would leave out the following events, but with Hirese’s desperation mounting it was certainly not for lack of trying that he remained alive for a bit longer. No matter how he tried, no matter what he seemed to do, the one known as Nero to Rome could not die. Tasedio did his best to look surprised as the other three—though it didn’t even come close to rivaling the sheer shock on their faces. Perhaps Hirese noticed this. Perhaps it was simply coincidence. But as the horsemen approached, he asked Epaphroditos—Tasedio’s disguise—to kill him. Moving to a more secluded area, Tasedio prepared to remove him to get him back to the Council.

 _Posurin,_ he thought, _get Arasen. Hirese is in a bad, bad way. I don’t think I can do this alone._

Silence met him in his mental channel. In his ears, there was the incessant begging of Hirese. He closed his eyes and tried to ask again.

_He won’t stop asking me to kill him. What am I to do? Is there anything I can do?_

“Kill me, please. I can’t go on like this any longer. You have no idea what it’s like.”

_How can I heal him? Is there anyone out there?_

“What have I done to deserve your silence? Kill me! End my life!”

Pausing for a moment, Tasedio looked up at Hirese with his eyes open. “Is that really what you want?”

“Yes. I can’t escape my head. There’s nothing I can do. I’ve long since gone insane—this is one of my few moments of clarity. End my life. I can feel it—the end is imminent. Kill me while I’m still myself, while I’m still lucid.”

And so, in compliance with Hirese’s wishes, Tasedio plunged the knife he had been handed into him, shifting back into his original form as he did so, and began to weep. The blood poured out of Hirese, spurted, even, and Tasedio saw the recognition dawn on him. “I knew it,” he said, his voice hoarse as he started to go limp. “I knew it would be you.”

“I know you did,” Tasedio replied, his voice melancholy. “And I think that only cemented your fate.”

His eyes wide with fear, Hirese grabbed the front of Tasedio’s clothing. “Never forget this,” he intoned, his voice echoing and vast as it had never been before. “This will happen again and again and again. Never forget this, and never forget what I have taught you through this. You cannot fight the future. I have seen my end for years and spent all of them trying to avoid it. Do not try to change fate just because you do not like it. It will only come back to harm you in the end.”

“Hirese,” the redhead started feebly, “I’d always considered us friends.”

Hirese shook his head. “No. I was always trying to dodge my fate, to run from it, and you may as well be its personification. You are inevitable and unstoppable, and you will be the end of us all. We could have never been friends.”

For some time, Tasedio simply sat and wept as Hirese died slowly in his arms, never speaking again, until the seer stopped breathing. Moments later, a golden yellow light flowed outward from Hirese’s slightly parted lips. Tasedio leaned over a bit, as if to inspect it, when upon inhaling it rushed into his own lungs instead.

In only an instant, the entirety of everything Hirese had seen, had done, had experienced rushed before his eyes. Everything the other man had ever felt or thought was a flicker in his mind, and he was dimly aware that he had collapsed to the ground. More visions, visions of the world that was to come, followed those; soon he found himself back in his own body, his own mind, but with knowledge of all he had seen.

He saw the rise and fall of empires. He saw the death of everyone he knew and cherished, and his own rise to power, though he could not tell what sort of ruler he was. He only saw that he was beloved. He didn’t know how he felt about that, either.

As Tasedio tried to stand, though, he heard a voice in the back of his head. _Don’t leave my body lying there, you fool. You’ve got to take something back to them. You can’t just go running away like Arasen. This is the human world we’ve chosen to interact with. Things need to make sense to them._

 _Who are you?_ he asked the voice in his head, as if they were communicating telepathically. He could feel it was in his own head, but it still seemed like someone else saying it. _And how did you get in here?_

_Ever the naïve idiot I thought you were in the first place. It’s Hirese. You’ve absorbed my soul, and now you have my abilities._

Pausing for a moment, Tasedio considered this. _Is this my mind fragmenting into pieces because I experienced something traumatic, or are you here because there’s some sort of essence of you embedded in the air I breathed in that’s just latched onto my brain?_

Hirese did not answer for some time. _…I suppose a little of both. The powers are absorbed, but this conversation we’re having is because you’ve gone a bit mad._

 _That’s fair._ He stopped. _You know, if you don’t mind, I don’t think I’ll be using your abilities much. They didn’t seem to work out so well for you, and I rather prefer not knowing what’s to come. I think it’d do me well to forget what I’ve seen, as well._

_That is understandable. I will be on reserve in case you should ever require my advice or my abilities. For now, though, I think I am going to take a much-needed respite from everyone and everything. I’ve not been well for a very long time._

_Alright. I’m glad you’re not all gone, then, at least. Even if you are just a figment of my imagination. I hope you can get better in here._ Hirese was gone before he finished, leaving him to only his own thoughts once more. He picked up the other’s corpse, hefted it onto his shoulder, and started the trek back to the main camp. He would not pay for this, not with the Romans. But the consequences of what he had done had the possibility to kill him outright with the Council.

Tasedio was alright with that.

 

“You killed him,” Atusiel stated, his head in his hands. “The one thing we asked you not to do, and you did it.”

“No one would respond to me,” Tasedio muttered. “You all left me when I needed help. I had him cornered. He wouldn’t stop pleading, Atu. Wouldn’t stop asking me to kill him. He wouldn’t stop. I had to do it. I couldn’t stand to see him like that.” Clenching his fists, Tasedio leaned forward, his eyes glinting dangerously. “Why, Posurin, didn’t you tell me what to do? Why didn’t you advise me? You weren’t doing your job. None of you were doing your job. You all abandoned me the minute I agreed to take him back here,” he hissed. “I’m done with you. I’m absolutely finished with all of you. I can’t stand the sight of you. You’re all a damned disgrace.”

He saw Atusiel stand in anger, as if to command him, and he saw Posurin give him a stern look. Roanah still looked bored. Arasen was taken aback. And Lanadel… Lanadel was smiling, as if satisfied with his outburst. But he didn’t have much time to analyze their reactions, as these were all merely fleeting glances before he fled quickly and violently with wings tearing free from the back of his clothing. He turned again far up in the air, so far up he knew none could see him, into a bird so that he could escape without drawing attention to himself. He knew Posurin could find him if he tried, but he was going to do his damnedest to stay hidden.

For some time, he stayed in the woods, away from the eyes of the others and quiet as he could manage. On occasion, Hirese would appear and speak with him, but never for more than a few hours at a time. They quickly reached something of an understanding—Hirese could tell when Posurin was probing, and actively disliked being seen or contacted by those outside of Tas. _“Others and their actions drove me insane,”_ he would say. “ _They drove me to my death, and the rest forced you to be my executioner. I don’t hold it against you. I only wish that I hadn’t looked so much that I had seen my own end.”_ So he stayed quiet, alone, and didn’t cause many problems. He had a habit of trying to share his visions with Tas, but the trickster would always deny them. Hirese never got mad. He understood not wanting to see what was to come. Still, he did a very good job of reminding Tas to think quietly and in an obscure fashion so that Posurin couldn’t read him properly, and would never be detectable when such things were happening.

Soon, though, Tas came to rely heavily on Hirese. He had been alone for a very long time, and his strength and power were waning heavily. Hirese suggested that he show Tas safe places to rest. He liked that. Hirese never lied to him, never did him wrong, never chased him down and tried to kill him. He was subtle, but ever-present and soothing in a way. They were both glad, in a sense, that Tasedio had ended the seer’s life. It was a relief for them both. Tas sometimes thought this would be strange to others, and that they might not comprehend why it was so calming, but no one else was in his head when these things were relevant, so he didn’t worry about it.

He did worry about Arasen, though. He worried that he’d offended her, or had made her terribly upset. Hirese reassured him that the Last-Borns would stick together, always, but Tas was not so certain. He also didn’t know what Hirese had meant by Last-Borns, but he didn’t seem to keen on explaining most times Tas asked him, so he was satisfied to let it sit. He tried to remain calm—he knew he’d be easier to detect if Posurin could feel his emotional outbursts—but there were several instances where he was so terribly upset that he could no longer hold it in.

No one from the Council came during these times, whether to comfort him or to capture him. Hirese was fairly certain that they feared the outcome. _“You have proven that you’re able to kill the others, after all,”_ he would say. “ _No one else knows if they have the capability. They just know that you do. They’re afraid of you, Tasedio. Revel in it. You are stronger than they are. You know this to be true.”_

Listening to Hirese’s rants sometimes gave Tas headaches, and he often tried to ignore them so he wouldn’t get power-mad like his friend had, but they did make him think quite often. Were the others afraid of him? Did they think he had vast amounts of potential? Sure, his abilities were quite strong, but he didn’t think he’d be able to kill anyone else. That was a one-time deal, and he’d been told by them to do it. Though, when he thought about it, he was quite bitter toward them, and if it came down to him or one of them right now… as long as it wasn’t Arasen, he thought he might be able to do it. He sort of wanted to die for what he’d done, but he was bitter enough toward the others that he felt it was more their fault than his. There was nothing he could have done. Hirese forgave him. But Hirese had never forgiven the Council.

Could he be blamed? After all, they had turned against him, pegged him as insane, and sent Tas—their youngest, the one viewed as least capable—after him. Hirese said it had felt like they wanted one of them to die anyway, stating that he might’ve killed Tas if he hadn’t been so mired in sorrow and he’d been able. He was quite certain that they could all kill each other if given the opportunity, but he wasn’t sure.

“ _I’m glad it was me that went and not you,”_ he said once. “ _I think that my head with you in it would have been completely inhospitable for the both of us. It was paranoia, fear, and darkness. Your mind is chaos, that much is certain—but at least it is quiet chaos, the kind where you can still find a place to settle down and not be bothered for a long while.”_

Though it might’ve been conceited, Tas was glad that Hirese enjoyed it in his mind. He was certain that any of the other members of the Council would’ve started to act much differently if they’d been hearing someone in their head, but Tas didn’t find it out of the ordinary to converse with someone that didn’t physically exist. Talking to someone else in his head was practically second nature, with how much he’d talked to Posurin. Though the name was still sour on his tongue, he thought it better to remember the good times and revel in the friendship they used to have not so long ago.

Tasedio lived in seclusion with only Hirese for company for something like a year before Arasen finally caught up with him. Hirese hadn’t warned him, which had made Tas rather cross, but his only friend had responded that this was necessary for his growth and for his mental well-being. So he’d humored her.

“I understand you’re upset with us,” she started, “but your fits aren’t going to change anything. We don’t know why you felt you needed to kill Hirese, but I wanted to stay by you and support you nonetheless.”

Tas gave her a disgusted look. “My fits? Well, if that’s how you view it, I suppose not. I’m having ‘fits’ because you’ve all decided that you’re allowed to sic me on one of our own, then when I kill him out of mercy, that’s an awful thing to do and I should be punished. I saw the way Atusiel was looking at me. He was going to change me. I don’t want to be changed by him. Do you remember the last time that happened?”

Arasen was silent.

“I ended up being his damned _pet_ for who knows how long. I revealed every secret I could ever remember having to him, spilled myself out just because I thought he might give me the time of day for it. He didn’t, Ara, and he was about to do the exact same thing again. And,” he said as she opened her mouth, “do you know what he would have done if he had? He would have charmed all of you into letting it happen. And once I stopped being useful, once I stopped telling him what was relevant to him? He would have murdered me in cold blood, and none of you would have done a damned thing about it. So leave me be. I needed to get away from everyone, and if you can’t see why now, you’re completely out of it.”

“I’m trying to help you!” Arasen barked. “I know of a place not so far from here where we can hide out, get things sorted out, and set things straight. Just us two, none of the rest. Is that okay?”

Giving a resigned sigh, Tas let his shoulders relax. “I suppose, since you don’t seem about to kill me or rope me in and take me to Atu. Where are we going?”

“It’s a quaint little town near a volcano. Pompeii. I think you’ll love it.”

_fire, fire everywhere, raining from the sky, choking off the sky with ash, lungs filling, death reigning in the streets_

The shapeshifter shook his head. A thought, a vision, had come to his mind unbidden, drowning out Arasen’s words without Hirese speaking behind it at all. He thought that the seer might have still given him the vision without asking first, but he wasn’t sure. “Sorry, what? I didn’t catch that.”

“Pompeii. It’s in Italy.”

“Ah. Alright.” His mind stayed quiet this time, and he couldn’t help but wonder if it hadn’t been something he had made up, something he hadn’t really thought. They’d said a while ago that he was going insane. Maybe this was just the inevitable manifestation of such things. “I suppose I’d be up for that.”

“Great!” she exclaimed, finally perking up. She beamed at him, and he couldn’t help but smile back. He had forgotten what it had felt like, not having the responsibility of tracking and attempting not to kill someone. “Let’s get ready, then.”

Very few preparations needed to be made, so they were off within hours. Pompeii was more beautiful than Tas had expected. Arasen had asked Posurin to leave them be for a while, so Tasedio was fairly confident that they were finally alone, escaping somewhere that the others would not be able to find them or bother them. He was thankful for this, as he wasn’t sure he could have handled further contact with the rest of the Council. He needed some time to think, and perhaps a shoulder to lean on in the process. 

For some time, life was calm. Tas and Arasen simply lived amongst the people of Pompeii and interacted with them, letting the situation with the Council simmer down and regain stability. Tas wasn’t entirely certain how things would go when he rejoined them, but he tried not to think about it as much as possible. They passed the time easily as they remained in the city, enjoying the friends they made and reveling in the tranquility.

Such peace, naturally, could not persist for long. 


	5. As days go by, the night's on fire

He’s getting harder to read. He’s getting colder, crueler, and you’re not sure how to deal with it. You think he’s taking too many of his ideas from Loki, but he vehemently disagrees. Everyone is still satisfied with him as their ruler. They have no other choice. Trying to help him makes you so tired, though, and every breath chills you as it goes down your throat. He still wants to show you his past, but with the distance between you growing you’re not certain you want to see it anymore. He insists, though, and says it will bring you closer, will make it so that you do not grow so far apart like you think you might.

So, despite yourself, you let him show you more.

 

It had been several years since Tasedio and Arasen had settled down, and they were finally starting to be viewed with suspicion based on their impossibly youthful looks and longevity. They hadn’t planned to stay so long, but it was so calm and quiet that they had never bothered to try moving until then. But just as they found themselves packing up, in a midsummer afternoon, a column of ash exploded from the top of the nearby mountain. There was flame, fire and choking cinders raining down, and Tasedio was momentarily paralyzed as his previous vision of the future and current view of the present matched up perfectly. “We need to go,” he stated, his voice flat as the ground trembled. “Now.”

“What’s going on?” Arasen asked, rushing to the window with a look of concern. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” he whispered. “It’s just as I feared. This entire town is going to be wreathed in flame, and we will go down with it if we do not evacuate immediately.”

“You’re certain?”

“It’s one of the only visions I’ve received,” he said, blinking. “Hirese is in my head, and he has chosen to show me this. Now it’s happening. We can’t just stand around and do nothing. We need to leave.”

“Hirese is in your head?” she snapped. “Why didn’t you tell anyone that you were going insane—“

“You already knew!” He turned, his eyes blazing like the sky outside. “Lanadel knew. You all knew. If you don’t help me leave, I’m going to get out of here on my own. You won’t die, I’m certain of it, but I’m not waiting for you and letting ash stick in my lungs just because you’ve decided to suddenly remember I’m apparently out of it.”

“Tas—!” she started, but he had already started to walk out the door.

“Are you coming or not?” he asked, and she strode forward and grabbed his wrist in a fashion more brusque than he was used to, especially from her.

“We need to talk,” she said as they vanished.

“About what?” he said the moment they were again at rest, now on an unfamiliar beach.

“Hirese’s in your head. You didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me that you were starting to… you know?”

“Starting to what?” Tas asked, raising an eyebrow in condescension. “Please, tell me all about how I’m going completely insane and you’re so worried for me. It’s not like I’ve heard it before.”

“I kept you safe, you ungrateful little brat!” Arasen spat, her shoulders tensing. “I’ve been trying my hardest for the longest time to make sure you’re alright, and this is the thanks I get? You’re such an ass!” She still hadn’t let go of his wrist, her grip tightening as she glared. “You know what? I’m taking you back to the Council. I’m throwing you to the dogs. I’m not doing this anymore if I don’t even get a tiny bit of respect for it.”

Tasedio didn’t even have a split second to fight before he found himself back in the familiar circle, Posurin sitting across from him, with Arasen suddenly missing once more. She blinked back into existence with others in tow several times, but once she had collected Roanah, the last of the members, she vanished again and did not return.

“It’s been a while,” Posurin stated, his smile slight and rueful. “I haven’t spoken to you in years. How have things been going?”

Tas rolled his eyes. “Well, since you seem to have stayed in contact with Arasen just fine, I would assume you already know.”

“Elaborate for the rest of us,” Atusiel growled, but with slightly less edge than Tas was used to. He sounded tired. It hadn’t been a command, either. It had sounded more like a request. “In spite of the fact that we shouldn’t even be holding this meeting with Arasen gone. Apparently she called a meeting and decided to not attend. It’s got something to do with you, and I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on. So please. Tell the rest of us that can’t just pop into your mind for a look.” Tas looked at him, confused. Atu’s expression was painstakingly neutral, but there were deep purple bags that seemed carved into his face. He had been losing sleep for some time. Tas supposed it wouldn’t hurt to humor him.

“Arasen thought she needed to protect me,” he started, “seeing as I’m apparently too crazy to help myself. I’ve been—I’ve been hearing Hirese, in my head, and he’s been giving me advice and keeping me company. Then Arasen showed up and took me to Pompeii, and that exploded. Quite literally, in case you haven’t heard. I got frustrated with her because she was getting upset over me being crazy, which she already knew about, and frankly I don’t really want to deal with her and her hero complex much anymore. She can’t save me, at least not how she wants to. I’m starting to wonder if there’s any ‘saving’ for me in the first place. I’m pretty clearly not the kind of person who deals with it well, and I’m a murderer to boot.”

“I don’t think you need saving,” Lanadel said, a slight smile across her lips as she rested her chin on her fingers, interlaced, elbows propped up on the table in interest. “I don’t think any of us needs ‘saving.’ I think you could certainly stand to utilize your talents better, but I don’t think you need to be saved.” Tas gave her a curious look, so she continued. “It’s very simple. You have a great deal of talents that would be so much better used in ways other than, well, what this Council has been using you for. You’re not our cute little assassin boy, and you’re not a disaster waiting to happen. You’re so much more than that, and I’d like to show you what you’re capable of.”

 “You said that I was crazy,” Tasedio said, blinking. “You were the first one to give Arasen the notion that it was happening.”

“Crazy like the fox, darling. Clever, cunning, hard to catch, and just a touch insane. It would be an honor to work with you. Or, rather, I suppose it would be an honor to have you working with me.”

“So no one trusts me with leading an operation, even you when you’re claiming to want to help me?” he asked, growling a bit. Lanadel burst out laughing.

“Of course not, love! Let’s be realistic. The last time you led an operation, you murdered Hirese. I don’t think anyone wants to see what would happen if you tried it again.”

Tas fell silent, looking equal parts offended and hurt. Lanadel shook her head, standing up from her seat and walking over to him. “Oh, don’t give me that look. I told you quite some time ago what would help with all your loneliness and the hole inside you that you can never seem to fill, and you didn’t go out and give it a try because you had someone else leading you. You’re not meant to lead yourself. Only ill ever comes of it.” She placed her hand on the center of his chest, smiling. “I know how to help you. It won’t save you, but it’ll make you feel better. I could use a touch-up, besides. And if Hirese really is speaking to you and giving you these visions, that’ll make everything go much quicker and you’ll have a greater gratification in the end.”

“Will you finally tell me about this damn prophecy about me being dangerous if I do?” he asked, frowning. “I mean, I understand part of it. I killed Hirese. But I don’t know what else is contributing to it.”

“Yes,” she stated, giving a slight eye roll. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Did you think I’d just leave you in the dark? I’m nothing like any of these dolts.”

“Dolts?” Atusiel asked, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “Why on earth—“

“You sit around a table and talk at each other like it’ll make a difference,” Lanadel said, tossing her hair in a way that overwhelmed Tas with pheromones from across the table. “You keep those of us who go out and _do_ things from doing what we need to get things _done._ You can talk all you like, but when you leave out important details and yammer on about the semantics, you’ll never achieve anything. I’m sick of the lot of you wasting my time. Come on, Tasedio.” She stood, walking around the table with fluid, lithe movements, then stepping just past him and looking at him. “Unless you think differently, I suppose.”

“You said what I’ve been thinking,” Tas replied, taking a step toward her. “They don’t do what they promise and they’ve never really accomplished anything we couldn’t have accomplished alone.”

“Exactly,” she said with a grin. “I’m so glad we see eye to eye on this. Now, I think it’s about time for me to teach you what I know, so that we can more adequately prepare you for the times to come.”

 

“The funny thing about people,” Lanadel started, circling the center of his chest with the softest touch, “is that you don’t need to be beautiful to manipulate them. Oh, yes, it certainly helps, but I learned my trade from an old crone in Hellas. She was withered and nearly gone when I met her, though she claimed she had never been very attractive to begin with, and she taught me her ways.” The gentle finger on his chest was joined by several more, making slow, small circles on his skin. He moaned softly as Lanadel continued. “No, beauty is not necessary. All you need to do is know what others want, and they will melt in your hands. They will do anything for you.” He inhaled, taking in her sweet scent, and closed his eyes with a smile. Lanadel let out an exasperated snort and withdrew her fingers. “Are you even listening to me? I’m trying to help you.”

“Yes!” he said, his eyes snapping open as he very nearly sat up. “Of course. Find out what others want and they’ll do anything for you to get it. It’s just—you were doing what I want, so it was a bit distracting, but I was listening, I promise.” Lanadel shushed him, pushing down gently on his shoulders, and he allowed his eyes to close again as both sets of fingers roamed his chest.

“You don’t want sex, Tas. That’s not your heart’s desire.” She traced a small heart over the skin on his chest covering the organ, then put her palm there for a few moments to feel its beat. “No, you want the hole in your heart to be filled. That is what you desire. You think sex, or at least extreme pleasure, may fill the void, but it won’t. It feels great for a while, and helps you feel whole for a bit, but it never lasts. This is not the peak of ecstasy.” Lowering her mouth to the other side of his chest, she breathed, “Though that doesn’t mean I won’t give it to you. I just want you to know this is as much for my entertainment as it is for yours.” 

He shivered, finding himself unable to hold back a needy moan. “Th-then what will fill it?” he asked, but she just shook her head.

“We’ll worry about that later. For now… let’s focus on this.”

The rest of the night was a blur for Tasedio, in part because of Lanadel’s scent and in part due to his own inattentiveness while he was awash with pleasure. The first moment of clarity he had was opening his eyes as a dog, his chin resting on Lanadel’s stomach, listening to her converse with Atusiel, who had apparently entered the room at some point while he’d been out. “You’re insane,” Atusiel was saying. “You’re meddling in things you don’t understand. You can’t begin to comprehend—“

“Save it,” Lanadel said with a wave of her hand. “I don’t need to know what I’m meddling in. He trusts me, and I trust him. That’s all that matters. I could never trust you, Atu. You’re better at backstabbing than he is. Maybe it’s you that’s insane.”

“What? That’s preposterous!” Atusiel replied. Tasedio barked. He wasn’t really certain what it meant, but neither would Atusiel, so it was irrelevant. Sort of a “go away,” he supposed. The manipulator looked down at Tas, a brow raised. “Is that him?”

“Does it matter?” Lanadel asked, smiling a little. “All that matters is that I now have the guard dog that you never were, the accomplice you could never hope to be. You were so afraid of not being the one holding the chain that I had to give you up altogether. Tasedio is smarter than that. He can function where he is. He can understand ‘subservient but equal.’ We are both important, both crucial to this idea—the only difference is that he listens to me because my talents include planning and such whereas his do not. You always criticized my plans because you thought yours were better. Now we’ll find out the truth.” She stood, glaring at Atusiel, then glanced over to the dog. “Tas, get him out of here.”

Tasedio didn’t need to be asked twice.

 

They’d been together for some time now, through the rise and fall of small empires and over a period of probably seven centuries. Lanadel had thought it best, given Tasedio’s visions of frigid landscapes, to move to somewhere a bit colder, further north. He hadn’t seen Arasen in ages. He was alright with that. He certainly couldn’t call what he had with Lanadel “love,” but then again, she didn’t really love him, either, so it was okay. It was more like she was mentoring him, teaching him about the wonders of how manipulation and trickery went hand in hand. Apparently, whatever lay up north was her final lesson to him.

They arrived upon a small group of people in these inhospitable lands, people who had adapted surprisingly well and were prolific for their kind. Though Tas suspected that the realm from whence they came might conflict with it, he found the people interesting and liked Lanadel’s suggestion of settling down for a while. The people liked Tasedio, too. They seemed intrigued by him, interested in his sudden arrival with Lanadel. She didn’t hesitate long before telling him to show off his capabilities. Though at first apprehensive, since he thought it might frighten them, eventually she coaxed him into showing off and changing into a multitude of animals, each exciting the people of the north more than the last.

“Loki,” they called him, and though he was regarded with fear, he was also seen with much joy, and they respected him more than he’d ever known. He enjoyed this, reveled in it. It filled him up in ways he’d never imagined before. These people thought him to be one of their gods. Who was he to deny them their belief, especially when it gave him such a heady joy that he could hardly think?

The repercussions, brief as they were at that time, came to him late one night after they had spent yet another night reveling in his continued presence. After all, the longer that Loki spent with them, the longer it was until he killed “Baldr,” whoever that was. He had gone to bed for the night, separate from Lanadel, when he was jolted awake by the distinct sensation that someone was in the room with him.

“Who’s there?” he asked, whispering into the night. The only response he received was a low, dangerous chuckle. “What are you doing in here? Who are you?”

“I suppose you could say I’m you,” the voice responded, sweet and smooth like he’d never heard before. “Or that you’re me. You’ve been taking my worship, Tasedio. You’ve been standing between me and the only thing keeping me alive.”

“I don’t understand,” Tas said, shaking a little. “Am I… am I having a vision? Is this Hirese’s doing? This isn’t funny.”

The unknown intruder laughed again. “Hirese? Oh, no. I’m much more threatening than he could have hoped to be. Or, at least, I was before you started draining me dry. I suppose that doesn’t matter, though. Now that you’ve made me weak, I’m more dangerous than ever. To you, anyway.”

Tas blinked in the darkness, trying to force his eyes to adjust so he could see who he was talking to. “I don’t understand,” he repeated. “I don’t know who you are. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to cause you ill. I’d like to fix it, if possible—“

“There’s nothing you can do,” the other said. “What’s done is done. I’m just here to punish you for what you’ve done and to preserve myself.” There was a rush of air, then something distinctly humanoid was straddling Tas, pulling his head up from the bed by his hair, staring him down more intensely than he could have ever imagined. Though the light was low, he could make out that the one assaulting him had long, red hair and eyes that might have been a color he recognized, but with shadows cast over his assailant’s face, they were dark as the void.

“I am Loki, the one you made to suffer,” he said, his voice bordering on a growl but still so sweet, so honeyed that Tas relaxed slightly, exposing his neck and looking up at Loki with a sort of pseudo-trust. “I existed long before you arrived here, and now you think to steal my worship by claiming to be me. Since you have drained me, I will use the last of what I have to plague you for the rest of your life. There will be no waking moment you have without me beside you, no thought will cross your mind that I cannot see. You will be mine to command, should I ever choose it, Tasedio, and you should hope dearly that you never make me any angrier with you than I am now. For I may be irritated that you’ve drained me, but with you I can be ensured life eternal.” A grin split his face, feral and predatory. “Ragnarok will not come for the Liesmith.” 

There was a flash of heat and light, hot enough to make Tasedio feel as though he had been burned, then Loki was gone. Tas hoped vehemently that this had just been a nightmare, then rolled over and went to sleep.

He woke the next morning feeling… fuller than usual. Not as if he were not hungry, but in the sense that the hole that had festered inside of him had normally felt somewhat full with being worshipped and that was satisfying to some extent. Now, it felt as though he were complete, like he was always meant to be this way, like there was nothing in the world that could take him down. This was strange, and he brought it up with Lanadel despite his beaming complexion and boundless energy.

“I’ve just… never felt like this before, I suppose. I had the most awful nightmare last night, and now for some reason I feel like I can do anything. It’s so strange. Do you have any idea what could be going on?”

Lanadel shook her head. “No idea. I’ve never felt that before. I guess I’ve always had the sensation of being completely ‘full’ and satisfied. You look much better, though. Healthier, in a way. I suppose that nightmare helped you out quite a lot.”

“I guess so,” he said, still grinning. “It was strange, though. I remember that—that I dreamt that Loki was real, and he wasn’t me, and he came to make my life awful… It was really quite bad, but I suppose with such a great result, I shouldn’t be complaining.”

_You should be grateful I didn’t end you. I only spared you so I could use you to survive. Oppression is coming and I needed a surefire way to avoid it._

Tasedio closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Maybe not so great.”

“What’s happening?” Lanadel asked, giving him an intense look. “Should I… concern myself?”

_Do not alert anyone. I will speak with you more privately at a later time._

“No,” Tas said, shaking his head. “I’m alright. Just a moment of dizziness, I suppose. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you certain?” she pressed. “Your… your insanity. It spiked. It seemed off.”

“I’m alright,” Tas insisted. “I need some time alone very soon, actually, but other than that, I’m alright.”

“Go ahead,” Lanadel said, waving him away with a hand. “We don’t have anything important going on for some time.”

Tas grinned. “Thank you so much,” he said, nodding, and retreated into his room once more. Once he was away from the others, he took a deep breath and concentrated. His voice was hardly more than a whisper when he asked, “What do you want from me?”

_I’ve already said that I am merely using your body to survive what would otherwise be my end. I expect you to obey me whenever I ask and to continue living. I would also enjoy frequent conversation. That is all._

Laughing, Tas shook his head. “You expect me to obey your every command? Loki, this is my body. I’ve bested you. Why would I listen to you?”

_Because I’m inside your head, and if you’d rather struggle, I can force compliance._

There was silence for a moment, then Tas asked, “What do you mean?”

_I suppose this would be more convenient for me anyway,_ Loki replied, and then there was a jolt of pain coming from the back of his head.

“Ouch! What did you do?”

_You will stop questioning me, Tasedio. I am your superior and you will treat me as such._

Even in his own head, Loki’s voice had sounded attractive. The usage of his name, though it didn’t make sense given that he wasn’t truly hearing it, amplified that tenfold and demanded obedience much like an external use of his name would have done. “Yes, of course,” Tas said, nodding, his voice breathy. “Anything you’d like.”

_That’s what I like to hear._


	6. Tell me, would you kill to save a life?

When Tasedio and Lanadel left the Norse and Christianity began to reign in the area, Loki fell silent in the other trickster’s mind for a long while. Hirese was quiet, but would still speak up from time to time. Tas supposed that was because he had been something of a loner in life, and didn’t have much of an inclination to interact. He didn’t begrudge the seer that. Having visions must have been very difficult. He knew, after all, that it was no easy task just having them every once in a while like he did when Hirese decided to share them with him.

Lanadel decided to take leave after that, which was alright as Tas was fairly certain he would’ve gotten sick of her after another century or two in close proximity. He sent out a message to Posurin to ask Arasen to meet up with him, apologized, and spent a great deal of time with her trying to make up for what they’d lost in friendship. He had grown, and he had matured some. Not much, certainly, but such was to be expected from the Trickster, and Arasen seemed glad that he was willing to recognize that he’d been ungrateful and a bit of an ass.

It wasn’t difficult for them to make up and start living together once again. They still had a tendency to travel, and Tasedio was as excited as ever to be moving about. There was something nagging in the back of his head, though, something that he couldn’t dismiss. He was catching something, musical notes in sequence, with his mind, picking it up like snippets over a faulty psychic connection. There were bits and pieces every few years, and it took him what felt like forever to put them together. He tried telling Arasen what he had found, but she didn’t have any sort of similar experience. In the end, he was alone with this, and even when it was complete, he still had no idea why it had completed itself. He had toyed with the idea of putting words to it in his original language—the one that the Council spoke in when they met, the one that they were all named in—but he hadn’t done anything quite yet, since his mind was having some difficulty processing things in the language for reasons he didn’t quite understand.

Apart from this, they were together for something like six hundred years in relative peace. They still fought from time to time as they were wont to do, but they kept their distance from the Council and for the most part everyone coexisted well. They migrated countries on a semiregular basis, finally testing out the comparatively new country “America” while Roanah was there as well. It did not take Arasen long to discover that something was up.

“He’s vying for a presidential seat,” she said, frowning. “Why is he trying to get into a position of power? Why is he exposing us like this? The last one to do that was Hirese, and, well.” Shaking her head, she looked down at the newspaper. “This isn’t right. Doesn’t he remember any of that?”

“If you take me in to him,” Tas offered, “I can have a talk with him. I could tell him what his future is to be if he does this, what will come of it.”

Arasen gave him a look. “The last time you tried that, Hirese ended up dead.”

“Well, yes. But Hirese could aid me here. He could do some real, tangible good.” He grinned. “I want to help him realize this is a bad choice.”

“Alright,” Arasen said. “But if this ends up with him dead, too, I think Atusiel might… get ideas.”

“I’ll do my best.” Tas clasped her hand, still grinning, and in the blink of an eye they were outside his home.

“I’m going to let you do this alone,” she said, “since you seem to know what you’re talking about. But if you ever—EVER get into trouble, just let me know through Pos, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Alright,” he said, giving a nod just before she vanished. Tas took a deep breath, then knocked on the door.

It was some time before anyone answered, though it was Roanah when someone finally did. “Tas? What on earth are you doing here?” he asked, giving a low chuckle. “I’d never have expected you to turn up on my doorstep.”

“Well, yeah.” He laughed. “Trickster. That’s sort of the point. But I’m actually here for something quite serious.”

“And what’s that?” Roanah seemed quite perplexed.

“Well,” Tasedio started, “you see, you seem to be trying to… become the president of the United States.”

“And?” the larger of the two asked.

“And it’s dangerous,” Tasedio said. “You could reveal us, or possibly even die like Hirese did. I’m beginning to suspect that now that Atusiel knows that you can gain powers from another, once he has an excuse to kill one of us, he will. I’m only trying to protect you.”

“Tas,” Roanah said, his voice stern, “I know that Atusiel and I don’t get along well, and I understand your concern, but I can handle myself quite well. I don’t think it would be necessary for us to have this conversation again.”

Tasedio chewed on his lip a bit, then said, “Are you certain? I could see what the future has intended for you. I mean, I’m just trying to help.”

“I understand,” came the reply, “but not all of us need help as much as you do.”

The door shut.

Needless to say, Tasedio was quite angry. He had only been trying to help, and he hadn’t thought he was going about it in a particularly callous or mean way. Yet he’d been brushed off so brusquely, as if his concern was nothing. He’d always thought Roanah a bit pompous, but not this much. He wasn’t infallible. He could certainly be killed.

_You could show him that,_ something in the back of his head responded, and he shook his head violently to rid himself of the thought. No. He would not be the one to stoop to that level. At least, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

_That is your duty as the Trickster,_ the voice responded. _You need to trick him to show him something is wrong. Roanah can’t die from a simple bullet in the chest. It would be almost poetic. And perhaps it would show him that not everyone wants him alive._

He supposed that was true, but that didn’t make him feel better about it. He didn’t really want to do it, but he was beginning to feel as though he had no choice. What else was he to do, after all? Roanah did need to be shown that he was not completely impervious to the will of others and that he was in danger. 

The moment he conceded the point to the voice in his mind, his vision went dark.

 

His eyes opened, slowly, to find himself viewing his body as though he wasn’t inhabiting it. The look on his face was the most determined he’d ever seen, staring down the barrel of a pistol and focused on Roanah, who was about to speak to a group of people. The trigger was pulled, the target shot, and Tas was suddenly and violently thrown back into his own body, shifting into the appearance of another and walking away as quickly as he could manage without drawing suspicion. Roanah hadn’t even budged, hadn’t so much as looked down at the bullet hole in his chest. Tas was sure they would rewrite the story as soon as they could, but until then, people would look on, mystified, and would find other ways to rationalize it themselves.

He made his way back home, to Arasen, shaking his head. “Must have caught him as he was starting to campaign,” he muttered to himself. “Probably only lost a few days. Maybe a couple of weeks. This isn’t good, though… Losing time is never good.”

_Oh, most assuredly not,_ Hirese agreed. _I would say you were dormant for far longer than I ever was, but this parasite in your mind is—_ There was a popping noise, then his friend went silent. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts, then knocked on the door. “Ara? I’m home.”

Arasen answered the door, looking rather frazzled. “Are you going to continue to shout at me?” she asked. “Is that all you’re going to do for the rest of the time we spend together? I’m damn near ready to pack up and leave.”

“What on earth are you on about?” he asked. “Can I come in? I… I have no idea what’s going on. If I’ve upset you, I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything.” She looked at him, scrutinized his expression, then waved him in.

“I don’t know what you mean, you don’t remember,” she said, sitting down at the kitchen table. He sat down opposite her, studying her movements. She seemed at the end of her rope, like she’d been stressed for some time. “We’ve been fighting for so long, I can hardly remember anything else. You keep insisting it’s what he deserved, but I didn’t support it. I tried to stop you.”

“For so long?” Tasedio asked, scrunching his brows together. “Ara, I don’t remember anything after going to go tell him that he needed to think about the repercussions of what could happen. I completely blanked out, and then I just now came back into myself as I shot him. I have no idea what’s gone on. How long has it been?”

“Since we found out he was running for president?” she asked, her voice in disbelief. Tasedio nodded, and she whispered, “Twelve years.”

“What?” he asked, and she blinked at him.

“I don’t…” She shook her head. “You sound more like you used to than you have in a very long time. But… how on earth could you have been completely out for twelve years? I don’t understand how… I don’t…” She took her head into her hands, and Tas noticed her subtle shivering.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but she jerkily shook her head again.

“I don’t understand how this could be happening.”

“I don’t either, Ara,” he stated, shaking as he touched her shoulder. She looked at him, tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m scared. I’m so scared. I think there’s something going very wrong in my head, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Just try to hang on, Tas,” she responded as she threw her arms around him, softly rubbing his back and trying her hardest to soothe him. “It’ll be okay. Please just hang on for me.” He nodded into her shirt, clinging to her as tightly as he could manage, but he felt his grip start to loosen as his sight once again turned to black.

 

His tongue was hot and heavy in his mouth. He felt like his lungs were burning, like he was being drowned. His chest quivered, like it knew the end was coming. Was he dying? Had Arasen killed him for getting out of control? Slowly, painstakingly, he opened his eyes.

Loki had physically manifested again—Tas could see him clear as day. He was guiding Tas’s hand down to Roanah’s body, speaking softly to him in a way that Tas didn’t quite understand. There were a great number of words he couldn’t make out, but then again, he had a tough time making sense of anything right now. He felt his power surge, as though he were using it, and felt something in Roanah move. Finally, Loki said something he understood. “We must leave, Tasedio.”

Tas was exhausted, too much to fight the command. So he succumbed, exited Roanah’s home, then paused. No one in the house was moving, he was fairly certain. There were no windows open. Then why was there a sound of something coming toward him? He turned, slowly, to see a copper light enter the air he’d just so decided to breathe. He felt himself fall onto the floor—he hoped for a second that no one had heard him—before memories barraged his mind and overran his own. He felt the uncertainty that Roanah’s demeanor had never betrayed, the sadness of being isolated even among his own people, the strength of character that Tasedio had never seen. He’d never quite been friends with Roanah, but then, they were really never all that close. Now, he supposed, they were going to be closer than ever before.

Tasedio pushed himself up with no effort—in fact, he was not used to how easy it was to lift his body off the floor. Loki had vanished, and it was almost laughable how easy it was for him to quietly descend the stairs and leave the house. No one was awake. No one was even close. He had just left the house, feeling more invigorated than ever, when an indignant, deep voice bellowed through his consciousness.

_What on earth have you done to me, boy?_

The shapeshifter bit his lip. _Er. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to._

It was practically a snarl now, disrupting any clear thought process he could have hoped to have. _You can’t do this on accident. What. Happened._

_Well, um,_ Tas started, _I think I accidentally took the worship from an ancient Norse god, and he decided to piggyback on my body, and he thought that I should, um, kill you. I don’t know why._

There was a cold presence in his brain, as if Roanah were staring at him without sympathy. _You’re very convincing._

_It’s true! Consult him yourself!_ Tasedio implored, bringing Loki to the fore where Roanah could confront him. There was a brief pain in his skull, and he knew there was some sort of mental combat happening inside his own head, but he decided to ignore it for now. It took him some amount of time to trudge back to where his feet seemed to recognize as home, then asked the empty darkness with a weary tone, “What did I miss this time?”

There was light. “The Great War,” Arasen responded, staring at him. “Do you think your mind is quite finished with this? I’m afraid that we’ll have to take drastic action if it isn’t.” Tas shrugged.

“No idea. Roanah is dead, so I would… I would assume so.”

Arasen took a deep breath, burying her face in her hands. “You’re not… you’re serious, aren’t you.”

“I’m sorry,” he offered. “He’s, um, he’s up here,” and here he tapped his head, “if you need to tell him anything.” She didn’t speak. She just curled up in a ball and started sobbing. “I’m sorry,” he said again, but it did nothing to calm her. Shaking his head, Tasedio took a step backwards toward the door as he put his hands up in a show of peace. “I’ll… I’ll leave you alone. For good this time. I really am sorry.” He turned, stepped out into the cold, and shut the door behind him.

Then the Trickster fled.

 

Roanah didn’t quiet himself for some time following his death, but Tasedio supposed that was reasonable. He had just died, after all. Not everyone reacts to that well. He and Hirese were spending a lot of time together, and Loki had all but gone completely silent again. Then again, Tas thought it would have made sense if Roanah beat him into a coma. Loki was the reason he had died, after all. Or at least, Tas was pretty sure he was. It was getting distracting, having all these people squabbling in the back of his head all the time, so he started working on ways to silence them, to block them off from his main consciousness. 

As luck would have it, he was actually quite effective at separating them from his main thought process. That, unfortunately, left him quite alone with his own thoughts the majority of the time. He was dedicated to staying away from everyone else. He thought he could function on his own, leading himself in an objective, but then he’d killed Hirese. Lanadel had thought he could thrive under someone else’s direction, but then he had killed Loki. Arasen had thought perhaps she could rein him in, and now he’d killed Roanah. It was hard for him to swallow, certainly, so he remained solitary and hidden for the vast majority of his time until he got something like a call from Posurin.

_“Atusiel requests your presence,”_ he said, his voice a bit flat. _“Mentally.”_

Tas sighed. _“I suppose he wants another meeting of the Council, doesn’t he?”_

“ _No, actually. He wishes to speak with you in private… using me as a channel. My memory of the conversation will be quite difficult to recall afterwords, so you need not fret about privacy.”_

_“What’s going on, Posurin? You sound like you’re being coerced into this.”_

_“I would rather not speak on it.”_ Posurin fell silent, and soon it was Atusiel’s voice in Tas’s mind instead.

_“Hello, my friend. How is it going?”_

Tas growled. “ _What do you want from me?”_

There was a soft cackling from the other end. _“Oh, I can’t just talk? One might think you view me with bitterness.”_

_“One might think. What do you want.”_

The voice went sour. _“Surrender yourself to me.”_

Tas burst out laughing, falling onto the grass and shaking his head. _“Oh, Atu, you crack me up. Why on earth would I do that?”_

“ _Because it’s either you go or Arasen does.”_

_“You’re bluffing.”_ Tasedio had suddenly turned somber. _“You wouldn’t risk ostracizing the rest of the Council.”_

_“Well,_ ” Atusiel said, laughing a bit, _“I don’t have to worry about that if you and I kill everyone else.”_

_“I don’t plan to kill anyone else,”_ Tas responded. “ _And I should hope that you don’t intend to kill anyone, or else you might force my hand.”_

“ _Oh, I’m quaking in my shoes. What exactly do you plan to do? I can simply command you to cease your behavior, to lie down and die.”_

_“You act like you know that so perfectly. I’m quite good at infiltrating, Atu. You might not even know I was there.”_

Atusiel laughed again. “ _Well, I’ll just have to weaken you first, then, won’t I? I suppose it would be best to start with your dear Arasen.”_

_“If you do a damned thing to Arasen,”_ Tasedio said, his tone calm and cold, _“you will force my hand, and Lanadel will perish as well.”_

_“So be it. It will not matter when I end you,”_ Atusiel said, and the connection went dead.

Tasedio blinked, and in the time it had taken him to do so, Arasen was in front of him. “Please don’t try to fight him,” she was pleading, “please stop this. Don’t be pig-headed. You’ve been gone for almost twenty years—I had no idea where you were, I don’t know what’s gone wrong with Posurin—but Atusiel broadcasted your location to the both of us, to Lanadel and I, so that we could—so that we could get rid of you so he’d just be able to take us out, presumably. He… I don’t know what he’s doing, but I think he’s going to hurt me. I don’t know how to make him stop, but you’ve got to find a way.”

“Arasen,” he said, “please breathe.”

“My life is on the damned line,” she replied. “I have every right to be worked up.”

“I didn’t say you don’t have the right. I just don’t think it’ll help much right now. What were you about to do?”

“I’m… I’m about to take off on a flight around the world,” she replied. “That’s what I’ve been doing. Flying planes. It’s quite… it’s quite fun.” She looked at him with resignation. “I’d like you to be on the flight. I’m not postponing it for Atusiel, just because he’s an ass, but I want you to be there in case something awful happens.”

“Alright,” he said, nodding. “I’d like to talk to you about what to do with Atusiel, though.”

“Once we’re in the air,” she reassured him. “Of course.”

 

“So. What do you want to do about him?” Arasen asked. There hadn’t been quite enough space for him at first, but to someone who could reshape matter, that was no problem. He had just pushed it out a bit so that he had more room to sit and had compacted it in other places. He hoped it wouldn’t have any negative consequences. 

“I’m not really certain. I think it would be a good idea to stop him, obviously, but I don’t know how to go about that. He’s got Posurin at his disposal, so he can effectively try to kill any of us whenever he pleases. It’s terrifying, but I’m not sure what we can do about it unless we try to take the fight to him.” He stopped for a moment, then asked, “So, er, what have you been up to?”

Arasen shrugged. “Pretty much just flying around. I had started up a bit while you had your stint with Roanah. Just sort of went from there.”

“Alright, that’s fair.” Tas paused, looking out the window. “We’ve been over the ocean for a really long time now.”

“It’s the Pacific, Tas,” Arasen said. “It’s the biggest ocean on the planet.”

“I’ve never seen it from this far away, though. You know?”

“I suppose.” As she spoke, her voice seemed to lose color, and she appeared to be contacting others through radio as she’d done several times on the trip already. They hadn’t received anything in some time, however, and this was rather perplexing. He wasn’t sure what most of it meant most of the time, so he was prone to dismissing it, but he definitely caught “gas is running low.” He was almost certain that they weren’t running low on fuel.

“Ara,” he whispered when she’d stopped transmitting, “we’re… we’re not low on fuel, are we?” Arasen gave no response. Her eyes looked quite glassy, and he stared at her intently. “Ara. What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

She continued communicating with those that were trying to contact her, but it sounded like she couldn’t figure out where she was supposed to land. They started sending signals in Morse code, which Tas couldn’t understand, and there was more jargon that he couldn’t decipher. “Please, Ara, tell me what’s going on.”

Arasen smirked, cruel like he’d never expected from her. “I think you’ll find out soon enough,” she said. “We’ll see just how easy it is to kill other members of the Council.”

Tasedio’s eyes widened. “Ara, please. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but please, please don’t kill me. I don’t want to kill anyone else. I just want Atusiel to stop. Please don’t—“

Her laugh was even worse than her smile. “Do you not realize whose hand has pushed all this?” she asked, glancing at him and shaking her head. “Who would want the both of us dead but Atusiel? He does not care which of us perishes and which of us lives, only that he will kill the remainder. So, Tasedio, which of us shall live to fight him, and which of us shall die?” She did something on the control panel, and the plane started to tilt slightly, then began its rapid descent toward the water. “Good luck.” She blinked, then recognition and fear overcame her. “Tas,” she said, a quiver in her voice, “I’m so sorry.”

“Please don’t be,” he replied. “I caused this rift with Atusiel. In the end it was more me than you that—“

She grabbed his hand, concentrated, and they were on a beach. They were safe. It was warm, like nothing he’d felt in years. “Where are we?”

Arasen shrugged. “It’s not important. We need to talk. Now.”

“About what?” he asked, and she stared at him.

“About what we’re going to do about Atusiel.”

Tasedio nodded. “Right. So. What do you plan to do about him?”

She stared at him, and suddenly it became all too clear.

“No. No, no, no, no. I won’t. I’m not going to do it. I can’t, Ara. I can’t do this. I can’t do this again.”

“Tas,” she said, her voice calm, “it’s okay. I could have just died because of him. I don’t know if it would have worked, but I’d rather you have my abilities than him. If I tried to take him on, he could predict me. I’m not as chaotic as you. It doesn’t always work out in your favor, but this time it will. But it’ll be impossible for you to sneak up on him without my capabilities, and I don’t want to risk being your enemy.” She cupped her hand against his cheek and smiled. “Besides, you said that Hirese was still alive in your head. Just do the same for me. It’ll be okay. This is what we have to do.”

“I’m not going to do it, Arasen,” he said, shaking his head desperately. “He’ll kill me.”

“You have to make sure he doesn’t,” she responded. “You have to be careful, but be yourself. I’d rather have you absorb me than let him make me kill myself and have his powers go to him. That’s what he’s going to do, you know. He’s just going to keep forcing it.”

“Ara…” Tasedio looked at the sand beneath him. “I don’t want to do this.”

“I know you don’t,” she replied softly. “That’s why you have to.”

He tried to make it fast and painless, the kind you barely even noticed. Her essence was sweet when he breathed it in, a bright bronze that he could have never imagined. 

At least he’d made it quick, he thought, clutching Arasen’s limp body as he wept.


	7. Tell me, would you kill to prove you're right?

He’s gotten worse. His cruelty is reaching new levels, even toward you. It’s terrifying that he’s already changed this much to someone so far from suited to ruling. You try to tell him that you’re worried, but he laughs at you. You talk to Loki about it, and you have a very stern talk with him about appropriate behavior, but Tom doesn’t get better. He’s scaring you with his sudden ability to be callous and unapologetic. You don’t know why this is happening. 

Logical fallacies that he’d neglected to mention like “You completely neglected to mention anything about you and Lanadel before this” and “Obviously the future sight wasn’t what drove you off the deep end” and “Shooting him didn’t work because it was impersonal, that was just how Roanah’s powers worked” and “Loki was obviously there long before you killed Atusiel” are brought up with Loki, and he tells you that Tom tends to have a tendency to mis-remember things when he doesn’t ask Posurin how it happened. The telepath has an eidetic memory, and records everything as it happens, including the memories of others in case anything were to happen to them, and this is what Tom has been calling upon: Posurin’s recording of his own memories, rather than his actual memory which is flawed as any human’s would be. This doesn’t make you feel any better. In fact, it makes you feel a bit worse.

When you ask, he tells you that he’s going to show you more of his story. You’re not certain you want to see more of it. He shows you anyway, and more of his life goes pouring into your mind unbidden. It’s almost painful in its velocity, going faster and faster but still accurate and you can feel each and every memory as it passes through you in ways you didn’t want it to.

 

He’d never buried a body before. Hirese and Roanah had both been put in the ground by someone else, someone more qualified, but with his new teleportation skills he’d acquired a shovel and had thought it couldn’t be that hard. He had been wrong.

It wasn’t even the physical labor that was getting to him. He had Roanah’s strength and tirelessness, after all. It was the emotional anguish. He kept looking over at Arasen, lying perfectly still, knowing what he had done. She still looked perfectly fine on the outside, which was a feat in and of itself. Tasedio had decided that in the future, he wasn’t going to kill anyone using his own powers ever again. It was too surreal. If he wanted to end a life, he made a vow to himself that he would have to see the blood on his hands. No more of this silent, still peace that Arasen seemed to be exhibiting. It made him hate having to bury her. She looked like she was just sleeping. He kept having to remind himself that he’d killed her to save her from Atusiel.

That was the reason he had to make the vow to not use his powers again. He knew he’d have to kill at least once more. He wasn’t going to make it painless like he had for Arasen. That wouldn’t be doing the man justice. He was going to make it as painful, as absolutely excruciating as he could possibly force it to be. That would have to wait, though. He couldn’t just go out and kill him. Arasen deserved better.

He buried her on the beach, deep beneath the sand where no one would ever find her. He sat next to her makeshift grave for what felt like days, then teleported into the closest thing he had to a home and refused to leave it for what he thought was a year. Neighbors came by to check on him, saying they’d seen him enter the house and hadn’t seen him leave in three days, wondering if something was wrong. He dismissed their questions, but at least now he knew how long it had been.

Posurin called for another meeting of the Council, but with half of the Council now inside Tasedio’s mind, it became easier and easier to evade his requests. Hirese had started blocking them out all on his own, he had found, on one of the few instances he had gone behind the metaphorical curtain to check up on them—mostly to make sure that Arasen was alright. It was actually quite funny—instead of Tas speaking and being possibly vulnerable to Atusiel’s commands (he wasn’t sure whether or not Posurin was still controlled, but he did know that it would be deadly to try and associate with them either way) it was instead Hirese that spoke and deflected any and all thoughts that anyone tried to put into Tas’s head. For this, he was grateful, and he let the seer know.

Still grief-stricken, Tas thought it would be best to vacate the area—the continent, even. He hadn’t been back across the ocean in quite a few centuries, and while he thought North America was fine, he found himself missing Europe. There was a longing, deep-set in his bones, to go back there. It reminded him of the time before they had started getting involved with the humans, of the time when it was just the seven of them and so many animals and the sky. He wanted to go back there. He wanted to enjoy it.

He stuck himself right in the center of what he was fairly certain they now called the Black Forest. He knew Posurin could still sense his location, but he was also fairly certain that Posurin had remained in the United States. Since he was the only one with teleportation and Hirese was so handily deflecting attempts to control him, Atusiel would be hard-pressed to find him in the flesh. He patted himself on the back mentally, thinking himself quite clever for his ploy. It wouldn’t be long before he was ready, mentally and emotionally, to end Atusiel’s reign of terror over the rest of the Council.

Atusiel got to him first.

It hadn’t felt like long—perhaps only a year or two, he wasn’t sure—before he’d been found. He had tried to evade, he really had, but there hadn’t felt like there was anything he could do. Atusiel had him pinned down as soon as he left the wild. Of course, he hadn’t been doing it personally, but he had sent someone to take Tas under his wing. It had been easy. The agent only had to say his name, and he was gone.

He woke in a dark room. His mind was uncharacteristically calm, and he felt sluggish and heavy. His tongue was leaden in his mouth, and as he struggled to raise his head to focus, blinding lights flicked on and stabbed through his eyes. He closed them, pressed his face into the cool, flat surface below him, but to no avail.

“It’s been a long time, Tas,” Atusiel said, not speaking German or English but their native tongue.

The Trickster laughed. “As if any amount of time was too long before the next time I saw you,” he spat. “Arasen died because of you.”

“At your hand,” the other responded, exuding nonchalance. “It would be so easy for me to just exterminate you right here, wouldn’t it? But that wouldn’t be any fun. It wouldn’t be a fate worthy of my greatest foe.”

Tas snorted. “I’m your greatest foe? What on earth did I do to deserve that placement? I’m almost flattered.”

“What, constant ruination of my plans isn’t enough to qualify for you?” Atusiel asked, and Tasedio laughed a little, his face still pressing into the cool surface, his eyes closed.

“For me, it was the whole ‘controlling me, lying to me, and forcing Arasen to see no other way out.’ Just a bit more detailed. Just a bit more on the good side.”

He knew he’d pressed a button in Atusiel, though he couldn’t see the fire no doubt raging in the Commander’s eyes. “I am doing what is right. I am imposing order upon the humans and giving them relief from your chaos. They suffer at the hands of unpredictability.”

“But they will never flourish under your rule,” he said, and expected a flash of pain. It never came. Atusiel remained completely silent for a while.

When he finally spoke, he said, “Perhaps not. But we both know that you will.”

Tas swallowed. “I don’t exactly have a good history as far as this goes.”

“That’s why I’ll make certain you never have another thought of your own,” he replied, and Tasedio’s anxiety caught in his throat and threatened to make him gag. “You’ll love it. You know it already. You’ll dispose of the rest of the Council for me, once all this is finished, and you’ll be my personal guard dog for a while. And then I’ll dispose of you and take your abilities for my own. It’s the sweetest torture you could ever have, and you’re going to enjoy every minute of it.” His voice was nearly a snarl now. “Or maybe I’ll keep you alive forever and condition you so that you can never, ever leave my grasp. I rather like that idea. It makes me want to start right now.”

He flipped Tas over, exposing his eyes to the light and forcing him to blink and adjust. “I’ll fight you every step of the way,” Tas stated, though his voice was growing more feeble by the moment.

Atusiel shook his head. “No, you won’t. Not soon, anyway. Now. Shall we begin?”

 

He’d started out slow, and that was the most excruciating part.

Loki, realizing that this might threaten his immortality, decided it would be best to aid Tasedio in this endeavor. As such, he took some of the conditioning upon himself, allowing Tas to retain a certain amount of autonomy. There was that slight, subtly creeping influence that wove itself through both of their thought processes, making them pliable and more receptive to Atusiel’s commands. After a time, it grew further toward them fighting over who received the control at that point and who didn’t, and Atusiel noticed the struggle and repeatedly only allowed Tas to receive conditioning. Still, with the amount that Loki was given, he had retained some free will and was happy to still be creative and able to make informed decisions for himself. With this obvious favoritism, Loki retreated behind the curtain once more.

Most of Tasedio’s memory from this time was spotty at best. He only seemed to recall the portions where he was in direct contact with Atusiel, receiving directions from him in person. After all, none of the other things he did really mattered to him at the time. He knew what he was doing, certainly, but he thought it preferable not to dwell on thoughts such as those. His place was by Atusiel’s side, complacent and ready to strike at a moment’s notice. He thought that sending him out on missions such as these were a waste of his time and were altogether unproductive. After all, murdering an entire group of people would not readily spread his influence. Why, then, was he doing it?

His memory was vivid, however, during all the times when they had time together, crisp and clearer than anything else he’d ever known. His head was always so pleasantly fuzzy, but his sensory input was sharp and definite. Atusiel’s commands felt amazing to him, and he was more than happy to carry them out, especially when he didn’t ask for much. Tas was always the happiest when his commander was near, telling him what to do.

Eventually, he grew exhausted as the elation dimmed. Following commands all the time was quite tiring for him, and while he enjoyed the release he felt with it, he just wasn’t sure he could do it anymore. Loki jumped at the opportunity, giving Tas some time to rest and recuperate. He was still able to think inside his own mind, but Loki was controlling his body until he gave the word that he was ready to resume. As he rested, his desire to serve dwindled, and as the victory of the Allies approached, he found himself itching to return to his former goal, Atusiel none the wiser.

It was almost too easy when Atusiel revealed his plan to feign his death and escape unscathed to Tasedio, still unaware of his mental state. He’d been lazy with the reconditioning lately, and even Loki was starting to grow disillusioned—but only just. The Trickster listened intently and made sure he knew exactly how to infiltrate, then overpowered Loki and locked him away in the back of his mind once more.

It was almost too easy to masquerade as Eva—his “girlfriend,” Tas was fairly certain, as they had been intending to go out together. It was certainly too easy to make sure she died how she’d intended to go out and to hide her body for the time being. The next and final step was to play the part to its logical conclusion—hopefully ending in Atusiel’s demise.

It was too easy.

 

“It’d be better if you went first,” Tas started. “In case something happened. They’d be more likely to do something to you.”

“I want to do it together,” Atusiel replied, taking the faux Eva’s hand in his own. Tasedio shuddered internally, but didn’t let his hatred show, choosing instead to remain passive. “That way we don’t have to worry about that.” He gave a look of suspicion. “Are you planning on having me die and then running out?”

“No! No, no, of course not,” Tas said. “I would never do that to you.”

There was a certain apprehension and regret in Atusiel’s eyes, but Tas wasn’t certain whether he was acting or not. Surely he had to be. Surely Atusiel wasn’t in love with this mortal woman? His facade must have broken during that time, though, as his enemy’s sadness changed to scrutiny. “You don’t seem quite right.”

“I’m fine,” Tas replied. “Just a bit scared.”

He felt cold metal press up against his temple. “Just a bit, Tasedio?”

“Yeah,” he replied, drawing a switchblade from his pocket and teleporting behind Atusiel to press the knife to his enemy’s throat. “Only a little.”

“ _Get off of me,_ ” Atusiel ordered. “ _On your knees. Now.”_

The blade clattered to the floor as Tasedio’s legs buckled under him, his form shifting back into his default as his knees met the floor. This had been a bad plan. He hadn’t considered—hadn’t even thought—

“Did you think I’d never figure you out?” Atusiel asked, his laugh bitter and short. “Did you really think I was that stupid? I successfully held you under my thumb for years, and you thought you could just waltz right up to me and kill me. I don’t know how you ever managed to kill Hirese with such little foresight.”

“I don’t either,” Tas replied, staring at the floor. “Why don’t you tell me. You all seemed to know exactly what was going on.”

“ _Silence,”_ Atusiel said, and Tasedio’s lips were sealed tightly as he gritted his teeth. “You know, I never really forgave you for what happened with Lanadel.”

The surprised, scrutinizing look that decided to cross Tas’s face must have been enough to get the idea across, as Atusiel continued, his commanding voice kicking back in full-force and thoroughly dazing his subject. “ _Arasen wasn’t enough for you, so you had to go run off with Lanadel, too, you little whore_ ,” he growled. “ _You had no reason to do so. You’d never shown interest in her before.”_ Tas tried to protest, but his mouth refused to move, so the statements hammered themselves into his mind as commands. The world shifted as he wavered, looking up helplessly at his nemesis. He would twitch involuntarily on occasion, but his muscles seemed to refuse to move with his consent.

“ _Coming to me like this, you must want to die,_ ” Atusiel sneered. “ _You couldn’t have thought this through, you helpless idiot. Can’t do a damned thing right._ ” He was right. Atusiel was always right. Tas turned his gaze back to the floor. He was hardly even worthy of looking at anyone else, much less someone so clearly superior. Atusiel deserved these abilities more than he did. He had always been a fool, never able to take care of himself, and now it had gotten so bad that the only thing he deserved left was an end to his pitiful life.

Atusiel was laughing. At least he could provide some amusement before he died. “ _I bet you’re tired of this. Stay still.”_ Tas nodded slowly, his eyelids drooping. He was so tired. Everything was fuzzy and numb. It was starting to get hard to stay upright, but he couldn’t allow himself to fall lest he be a further disappointment to everyone. He could feel Loki creeping around the edges of his consciousness, greedily siphoning off the control. He didn’t care anymore. He just wanted to close his eyes and never wake up again. Maybe Atusiel would grant him that.

Tasedio closed his eyes and waited for the soft _click_ of the gun that would mean his end, but it didn’t come. He waited. He cracked an eye open. How long had this been going on? Five minutes? Ten? An hour?

“ _Three seconds,_ ” Loki said. “ _It’s only been three seconds._ ”

The shapeshifter opened his eyes and stood. “Just get it over with,” he said, holding out his hand. “Give me the gun and tell me to kill myself. Honestly. Let’s just end this.”

“And why on earth wouldn’t I just shoot you myself?” he asked, the gun still pointed at his enemy’s head. Tas raised an eyebrow.

“Because in the end, if you just shoot me, you’re using brute force just as Roanah would have. Use your own damned powers to end my life. You were going to do the same for Arasen.” There was screaming in his head, telling him no, that they couldn’t possibly live in Atusiel’s head, but he dismissed them. He couldn’t fight this fight anymore. It just wasn’t worth the effort. “You win. Give me the gun.”

Atusiel pressed the metal into Tas’s hand and whispered, _“End it.”_  

Tasedio didn’t need to be told twice. Just as swiftly as he had taken the gun, he brought it to his own skull and pulled the trigger.

There was an explosion of heat, light, and pain like he had never experienced before. He was screaming, he was clutching something for dear life, and he felt something shifting in his head, moving around like it was trying to figure out where it was supposed to be. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t do anything. He was paralyzed. Surely if he wasn’t already dead, Atusiel would end it soon.

After what felt like an eternity of agony in his head, Tasedio opened his eyes. His knuckles were white as his fingers clenched around the gun in his hand, and his arm shook as he leveled it at Atusiel. After being blown apart and reassembled, his mind was painstakingly clear of commands as far as he could tell. There was still a litany in the back of his skull whispering some of the things Atusiel had said, but they were true, so he couldn’t bring himself to dismiss them. “Alright,” he said, his voice wavering. “Your turn.”

There was a simple rush of relief when he pulled the trigger and knew that all of this was over, but it was nothing compared to the plummeting of his stomach when he saw the ebony, glowing light leave Atu’s body. “Oh, no,” he whispered under his breath, gritting his teeth and trying his hardest not to breathe. The light wormed its way up his nostrils anyway, causing an incredible discomfort. Of course, he’d literally just shot himself in the head and recovered, so this was close to nothing in comparison, but that didn’t make it pleasant.

There was the wave of memories—he was almost used to it at this point, though he didn’t really care to see the ones flashing before his eyes—and it was too long before he saw the world swimming in front of him again. He shook his head, resigning himself to his fate, and closed his eyes, letting himself fade from the world for a while.

 

“ _I managed to set it all up to look like a double suicide. Just like they’d planned,_ ” a voice in his head told him. “ _No one will be the wiser._ ” He rubbed his eyes and sat up. There was grass all around him, soft and springy. It was still the same season, at least.

“No lost years this time, I hope?” he asked Loki, and there was a chuckle in response.

“ _No. It is still 1945.”_

Tas laughed a little. “And Atusiel was still mad about something from a thousand years ago.”

 _“I still am,”_ another voice informed him in the back of his skull.

“Thought you might be,” the Trickster replied. “I don’t suppose you’re going to be anything like Hirese and forgive me for my actions.”

“ _Never._ ”

“Right. Well then. Might as well lock you up and toss the key, then. Looks like it’s just you and me, Loki.” Tas frowned. “Bit curious to test this, though.”

There was a laugh, a deep, cackling laugh, and then Atusiel’s presence was gone from his consciousness. The Trickster took a deep breath, hardened his resolve, and stood up. “Alright. Let’s find someone.”

“ _Might I suggest myself?”_ Loki offered. “ _I am more than willing to give myself up for this.”_

“Why on earth would you do that?” Tas asked as Loki materialized next to him, a detached sort of interest in the other shapeshifter’s eyes.

Loki chuckled. “I’m a bit addicted, I’ll admit. We’ve just come off of years of manipulation, and while you got time to recuperate, I didn’t.” There was a little bit of an anticipatory smile in his eyes. “I’d much rather have this feeling tied to you than to Atusiel, at any rate.”

“Er, alright.” Tasedio shuffled awkwardly beside his redheaded compatriot. “What do you want me to tell you to do?”

“What do you want me to do?” Loki countered, a glint in his eyes.

Tas paused for a moment, then cleared his throat and did his best to mimic Atusiel’s intonation. “ _Sleep._ ” The god’s eyes rolled backwards into his head as his eyelids fluttered, losing his footing almost immediately and sinking into Tasedio’s arms. “Woah, there. Are you alright? _Talk to me, Loki._ ”

“I… I feel amazing,” Loki breathed. He sounded lost and dazed, but he was saying he felt good, so that was good, right? “Your voice is far more suited for commands than Atusiel’s. He is so harsh and demanding… yours is soft, soothing, makes one feel good about being told what to do.”

“Alright, that’s a bit scary. _Wake up._ It’s alright.” Tas patted Loki on the shoulder as he stood up straighter, opening his eyes. He looked expectant, though, so Tas found himself asking, “What more do you want?”

“I want to be dedicated to you,” Loki said, his eyes wide and borderline crazed. “I need you to—“

“Loki,” Tas interrupted, “you’re scaring me. Please stop. _Calm down. It’s alright.”_ The god’s countenance shifted to one of peace, smiling slightly as he wavered. “Please don’t do that again,” Tasedio said. “I don’t know what you want, but I don’t think I can give it to you.” He feared that the shot to the head may have affected Loki in some way, but he said nothing about it. “It’s alright.”

The god blinked at him, keeping his expression calm. “Tasedio,” he said, putting his hands on Tas’s shoulders. “You have so much power now. You want to help people, don’t you? Do you realize how much you could aid others with this power?” He laughed a little, grinning. “If you conquered the other two, you’d be unstoppable.”

“I don’t want to conquer them,” Tas replied. “I mean, I’m a little inclined to get rid of Lanadel to tie up loose ends, but Posurin? We’re close friends. I have no reason to want him dead. Besides, if I were to help people, I’d want others to help me with that. I don’t think I can do it alone.”

“Of course not,” Loki said. “That’s why I’m here. We’ve accomplished your original task, so I believe I will be going.”

Tasedio blinked, and he was gone.


	8. Crash, crash

It didn’t take Posurin long at all to find out that Atusiel had been eliminated, and Lanadel had seemed almost indifferent to the news. She was less indifferent, however, when his murderer showed up on her doorstep not three days later.

She had known he was coming, and so she had prepared herself emotionally to face him. What she wasn’t expecting was what she found.

Tasedio stood outside her apartment, looking painstakingly helpless. He kept biting his lips, which were already beginning to split, and his pupils were dilated like he was on some sort of narcotic. He was bracing himself against the doorframe as though he could barely stand. “Help me,” he whispered, and she took a step back from the door. “Please help me. I—I think Atusiel’s put me under some kind of curse or command that stuck and I don’t know what happened. I feel like I’m vibrating, Lanadel. My head feels so strange. I have this… this itch to partake in intercourse as the humans do, and I don’t know why.”

Lanadel looked at him with a frown. “And why should I help you? You did just kill my on-again, off-again.”

“Do you really think I would’ve asked Posurin for help?” he asked, then shook his head. “No. You’re more knowledgable than me in almost every regard, and I can do whatever you’d like to make up for it. Besides, he mentioned that us getting together was one of the reasons he was so angry at me. Said I stole you from him or something. Wanted to make sure we weren’t… actually on bad terms after this.”

“Ha!” Lanadel spit, bitterness seething from her every pore. “If that old ass thought he was _entitled_ to me, if he thought I was his just because we’d had a few flings, I’m glad he’s dead. Come in, sweetheart. I’ll get you fixed up as best I can.”

The Beauty sauntered inside, and Tasedio followed like a lost puppy. “Don’t get too eager,” she told him. “I’d like to talk to Atusiel first to see what he did.”

This took a while to process in his mind. He weighed the pros and cons of allowing the Commander out of his head. On the one end, he could get this resolved if Lanadel was honest and stuck to her word. On the other, she could easily just be trying to get her old lover back from the dead, and would take Loki in the process and give Atusiel a new vessel to live in. He would certainly perish if she preferred Atusiel to him.

A voice in the back of his head whispered, _I want to die._ It didn’t sound like anyone else inside his skull. In fact, it sounded exactly like him. He thought it might be best, then, if he trusted Lanadel. He would have something get fixed if she was telling the truth, and if she wasn’t, he’d be able to end his suffering. “Alright,” he said, and reached deep into the recesses of his mind and brought out Atusiel, allowing the world to go dark.

 

He opened his eyes on a bed, softer than he’d been on in years. He was short of breath, and dizzy, and still confused about his state. Lifting his head, he inhaled and moaned. “Lanadel, please. Please fix this. I don’t know what to do, but I want this feeling to go away however you can manage.”

“Atusiel said he’d been speaking with you in his particular voice with normal sentences, with statements,” Lanadel replied from somewhere behind him. “He made a comment about your sexual promiscuity with regards to Arasen and I, and he believes that since you were silenced, you took statements as commands as well. This has, in turn, made you prone to the arousal usually found in humans, spontaneously rather than only in situations where one would find it appropriate for us.”

“I still don’t understand,” Tasedio said. “It wasn’t as though I was doing anything you didn’t want as well.”

“Atusiel was jealous of everyone to hide his own insecurities,” Lanadel replied. “The ass thought that if he imposed restrictions on others, then his own problems would be invalidated. And so you suffered as a part of it, you poor thing.” She leaned in, and the most beautiful smell washed over him and heightened his problem even further.

“Please fix it,” Tas moaned. “I don’t care what he’s done. Please just reverse it.”

“That’s the problem, sweetie,” she said, frowning. “I can’t. I can… well, I can associate those terms with something entirely different, but I can’t make them go away. Hopefully it’ll be a little bit easier for you in the future, but it’ll make your sex life a bit odd for others, I think, should you continue on with it after this.”

Tasedio took a deep breath and turned around to look at her. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

Her laugh was melodic when she responded. “Let’s put it this way: I’m going to condition you to no longer associate those things with what they should be associated with. I’m going to mess around a bit in your head so that you don’t have to suffer like you are. I can’t remove his commands, but I can change what exactly they mean to you, at least to some degree. It’ll lessen the negative effects that you’re experiencing right now.”

“Oh,” he said. “Alright. Go on, then.”

He didn’t recall most of the next several days—and it was several days, as Lanadel told him, not just several hours. After a time, his mind had simply shut down and stopped retaining information about what had been happening to him. He didn’t have much of a problem with that. He trusted Lanadel. After all, she had kept him instead of Atusiel. The little that he did remember was quite good, so he wasn’t exactly complaining.

There were whispers in the back of his mind, though, that he was just being used again, that he needed to get rid of her. They sounded an awful lot like Loki, and since he’d last spoken to the god, Tas had noticed a shift in Loki’s demeanor. Rather than wishing to be controlled, he seemed to think that he was prime for ruling the humans instead. After all, he could feasibly use any of Tasedio’s abilities as long as they shared the same body. Tas didn’t really want to think too hard about that. While he had some certainty that he could keep Loki out of his head, he wasn’t entirely sure, and that was what scared him.

As such, he was hesitant to listen to Loki. He suspected that the redhead was just using him in order to distance him from those who could help him if things went wrong, trying to egg him into killing the rest so that he would have a shot at controlling the most powerful being on the planet. Tas was determined not to let this happen. Still, it wasn’t as though he didn’t notice the way Lanadel looked at him like a pawn, like a toy in some ways. He was there as long as he was convenient, no more, no less. He couldn’t exactly blame her, though. Atusiel must have far overstayed his welcome for how useful he’d been. Tas was just glad that she’d helped him—and, after all, he had said that he would do anything for her to fix it, so it was only right that he stayed with her.

He was half-expecting her to suddenly turn on him and attack him for his powers, but that moment never came. Lanadel seemed perfectly content to let him sit around and didn’t bother him. She would occasionally ask him to call upon Hirese for when she wanted to be prepared for a situation, but other than that, she hardly used him at all for much other than conversation and a very occasional romp in the sheets. He had to hand it to her: she knew how to get things done. She functioned with an efficiency that most of the others couldn’t have even dreamed of, and she didn’t even _need_ his help with seeing the future. She was intelligent enough that she could accurately discern a likely outcome. Still, she liked to be sure, and he couldn’t blame her. 

Tas’s complacency and Lanadel’s effectiveness was driving Loki up the wall, he could tell. After all, Lanadel wasn’t Loki, she wasn’t Tas, and she was far more likely to get the world wrapped around her pinky than either of them at this rate. The god had tried taking matters into his own hands, but Tasedio had deflected him at every possible opportunity. He could tell that Loki was getting really, really angry, but he wasn’t really sure what he could do about it other than prevent him from taking over and killing Lanadel. They continued to coexist for some time until Lanadel sprung an unexpected question on him late one night.

“So is that Loki in your head?” she asked, staring at the ceiling. “He does a very good job of coming out when you’re sleeping.”

Tas looked at her, horrified. “What? Oh, I’m so sorry. Has he tried to hurt you? I-I-I can leave, if he has. I’m sorry if I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

Lanadel sat up, looking over at him with an eyebrow raised. “No. He hasn’t tried to hurt me. He’s just got really good timing, or he’s aware of things when you aren’t. We’ve had a few very interesting conversations about what he wants to do with his life. I think he’s discovered how to manifest separately from your consciousness. You might want to watch him.” She laughed a little. “If you get the chance.”

“What on earth do you me—“ he started, but was cut off by a gasp as he felt a knife slide neatly between his ribs. Loki was beside him in an instant, boiling with rage and fire rolling at his fingertips. Lanadel grinned, pulling the blade from Tas and pointing it toward Loki.

“Tasedio,” Loki ordered, “heal.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Lanadel said, walking toward him. “You see, I’ve got this all figured out. In order to save him, you’re going to have to kill me before he dies. But in order to kill me, you’d have to be one of the Council. You’ve got no way of doing that.” Looking toward Tas, she frowned. “I really am sorry about this, but I could tell he was in there, just like I could a thousand years ago. And I knew he wouldn’t be so vocal if he didn’t want me dead. I knew that eventually, your will would give out and my life would be in danger. I didn’t want to take my chances against a psychopathic god using your body.”

“I’m hardly a psychopath,” Loki replied, taking a dagger of his own from what seemed like nowhere. “But I don’t need to be in order to be more than a match for you.” He turned, briefly, to Tas, and said, “Can you go into a coma for me, Tasedio? Just for a bit, slow your blood flow, that sort of thing. I’ll wake you up when this is all over.”

The last thing the Trickster heard was Lanadel’s cry of fury and battle.

 

“Tas? Tas, please wake up.”

The shapeshifter opened his eyes. “Ugh,” he groaned, looking around. “My ribs are killing me. Who is it?”

“It’s Posurin,” the voice replied, gentle on his ears. “You’ve been out for a while now. A few days, weeks, maybe. I was notified that you were here by Lanadel. It looks like she left a note for you, as well. She told me to help you, to make sure you were doing alright, and not to probe.” He smiled as Tas sat up, handing him the piece of paper.

_Tas—_

_I had to make a bit of a pit stop to drop you off during the fight. If all goes according to plan, she’ll be dead by the time I’m done with her. Don’t worry about the cleanup. I’ll take care of it._

_—L_

It was elegantly written, that much was certain, but Tas was fairly certain that it was not Lanadel that had written the note for him, or else he had suffered from a very terrible, very vivid nightmare. “She wasn’t here when she left it?” he asked Posurin, who shook his head.

“No. And she’s been putting up barriers to shield her mind. I haven’t been able to read her for a while now.”

“Oh,” Tas replied. “Well, don’t worry about it. I think she’s got it under control.”

“Of course,” Posurin said, nodding, his eyes a touch more vacant than Tas would’ve found comfortable. “Say, have you been doing something different in the past few years? You smell different.” The Mediator closed his eyes, taking a deep inhale. “Like cinnamon.”

 _For all his merits,_ Lanadel said from the back of Tas’s skull, _Posurin is not quite as quick on the uptake as he should be in many situations._

“You’ve got to be joking,” Tas muttered under his breath. “Sorry. It’s just a thing. Completely unintentional. Do you, uh… do you think it’s particularly good?” he asked, smiling a little. Posurin nodded. “Alright. Well, good to know. Think it would’ve proved quite hard to get rid of, besides.”

 _Your bodyguard is making a puppet out of my body,_ she added. _I hadn’t thought he’d be able to kill me. Activated your teleportation capabilities remotely and emptied an entire bottle of sleeping pills into my stomach while I sat on the floor rolling in shame that I’d been bested. That was a while ago, though. He’s been traipsing around, pretending to be me, and bringing this whole escapade to a more neat close. I have to give him some credit. If I had the capability, that’s how I’d have done it._

 _Alright,_ Tas replied. _So you’re not bitter? I’m really sorry this happened._

 _No,_ she said, a heavy sigh in her voice. _Hirese couldn’t fight the future, and neither could I. I should’ve known better. I knew that my quest for godhood would be the death of me. I just didn’t think it would take this long. I’m veiling our conversation, by the way, so that Posurin doesn’t pick up on it. Loki is clever, and he played me fairly. I’d rather not have him punished for that._

 _I appreciate it,_ the Trickster replied, and then Lanadel was gone.

“Posurin,” Tas started, “why do I hurt everyone?”

“Tas, don’t be ridiculous,” he said, putting a hand on Tas’s shoulder. “You don’t hurt everyone. You’ve made a lot of mistakes, and the people around you have made a lot of mistakes, but you don’t hurt everyone.”

“That’s blatant denial. I’ve killed most of our kind.” He looked at Posurin, studying him for any changes in demeanor, but there were none. “You have no way of knowing I won’t kill you, too.”

“If I’m honest,” Posurin said, chuckling, “I already know you will. I already know you’re going to kill Lanadel first, and soon, and I know you’re going to kill me, too. I just take solace in the fact that I was last. It’s nothing personal. I know that when it comes, it won’t be out of malice. In fact, it’ll probably be compassion. I’ve been wearing thin for some time now.” He stretched a bit, then held out his hand. “Come on, friend. Stand up. It’ll be okay. Even if you are bad, that doesn’t mean you can’t change. I think it would do you well to help people, to reach out and aid others. I know you’ve wanted to for a long time. I think that doing that for a while, going out and doing things that humans do and learning more about them, would be a really great idea. It’d help you to get a lot off your mind, and to better understand what the humans want and need. I think we were meant to help them instead of destroy them and enthrall them as we’ve done, and I hope to help them as much as I can. I can only hope that you’ll do the same.”

“That,” Tasedio said, taking Pos’s hand, “is an absolutely brilliant idea. Once this whole thing with Lanadel blows over, I think I’ll start up with that.”

Posurin nodded. “If I’m honest,” he said, “Lanadel and Atusiel always made me a bit anxious anyway.”

“So you’re just going to let me do it?” Tas asked, and Pos shrugged.

“What could I do to prevent you? It’s fate. It’s going to happen at some point anyway. Why intervene? Maybe if I don’t, Lanadel can go on her own terms, so to speak. She has been acting more and more outlandishly, lately.” He glanced over at the television set. “That’s part of what’s made me so anxious. I think she would have gotten out of control if she wasn’t afraid of what you could do.”

“She wasn’t afraid of what I was capable of,” Tas replied, shaking his head. “She wasn’t afraid at all. She just thought she should act before I did.”

“So her note made sense, I take it.” Posurin nodded. “Alright. Go do what you’re going to do. I’ll keep in touch.”

Not three days later, “Lanadel” died, very publicly in a manner none too inconspicuous. Loki returned to Tas later that night, grinning like a maniac. “Did you see it?” he asked. “I’m absolutely magnificent at playing dead, if I do say so myself. I mean, I set up the body I was using—I made it with your powers, I hope you don’t mind—and used it as Lanadel, and they thought it was her, and now they’re doing tests on it. And now here I am, up in your head again.”

“Yes, you did a very good job cleaning up, Loki,” he replied, “and I really appreciate that you saved my life, but I don’t think you did it for anything but to save your own skin, so I hope you understand that I’m not exactly thrilled by your actions.”

“I suppose I can understand that,” Loki said, his voice drawling and sarcastic. “I just can’t understand why you don’t want to rule with me. I’d let you, you know. You and I, in a body together, ruling all of the humans. It’d be magnificent.”

“I think your definition and mine of ‘magnificent’ are very different, Loki,” Tas stated. “At any rate. That means that everyone but Posurin is gone, and trust me, if you get rid of him, I will eject you from my mind in any manner necessary.”

“I have no doubt that you will.” The redhead smirked and disappeared.

“All these people are going to kill me,” Tas muttered to himself, and started tidying up the house.

 

Over the course of the next few years, it was easy for Tasedio to slip into the role of many different sorts of people. He worked in fast food service, in retail, in any and all low-paying jobs that dealt with as many people as he could muster. He found out the little nuances about humanity—the little things that made them tick, the things they loved, the things they hated. He found out how to be courteous, moreso than he ever had before in his life, by their standards. After all, courtesy between the Council and humanity tended to have a few poignant differences, ones that would’ve been inexcusable had he not managed to remedy them.

He made a great deal of friends during these escapades. Many people seemed to enjoy his easygoing, affable presence, his easy-to-approach nature and laid-back attitude. They flocked to him and asked him for wisdom, as he seemed to know far more about the world than anyone else, and took his words to heart. It was easy for him to help people this way, to give them a light in their life they might have not otherwise had. This made him think quite a lot. Many of these people were subject to misfortunes and mishaps, things that were detrimental to their lives. A great majority of these detrimental things were caused by other people—by death, unruliness, unfairness, greed, wrath, and pride. People were suffering because of other people. Tasedio wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Of course, Loki thought he knew exactly what to make of that, but Tas preferred not to listen to him. After all, they weren’t exactly on good terms after Lanadel’s death. It had been Loki that had made Lanadel suspicious of him in the first place, had been the one to ultimately kill her, had killed Roanah—it was increasingly evident to Tas that there was almost no benefit to having Loki in his head, when it got down to it. He wanted to change that, but he wasn’t really certain how.

Eventually, the day came when Posurin rose to fame, a staple in the horror community for his voice and demeanor. Tas supposed he was moving into horror as he became more morbid with age and his supposed death, but he was still ever the storyteller, ever the listener. Tas was happy for him. He wanted the last of the Council to be happy in his final days. He secretly hoped that Posurin had lied to him, that he would have the opportunity to be killed by the telepath at the last moment. He didn’t want immortality. It was tiring, and even though he was helping people, he didn’t feel like it was worth it. He didn’t feel like _he_ was worth it. He was a homicidal maniac and a psychopath, after all, or at least, that’s how the others had seen him. They’d known him for thousands of years, and surely they knew him well enough to judge. But then, he supposed, it was probably just as well that he would be forced to suffer with living for the rest of eternity.

Posurin asked several years ahead of time for his death, and that was part of what hurt so much for Tas. He’d already been called upon once before—he’d had a “son,” but Tas wasn’t sure any of their race could reproduce with humans, so he’d done a bit of matter reconfiguration in order to make the child bear enough of a resemblance to Posurin to make sense. This was different, though. This was uncalled for.

“It’s all that’ll make sense, Tasedio,” he said, looking at him. “We’ll pretend it was lung cancer. I’ve been smoking. Just make it look like lung cancer.”

“Posurin,” Tas choked, “please don’t make me do this. I already—with Arasen—and I just don’t think I can do it again.”

The Mediator shook his head. “I know you can. You know I don’t want to go on anymore, and you’d rather not let me suffer. Just get it over with.”

Tas took a deep breath and put his hands on Posurin’s shoulders. “Posurin, I’d always considered us friends,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes. The telepath patted him on the shoulder, smiling as the last of his breaths left his lungs.

“I did too.”


	9. Burn, let it all burn

It does not take long after that for him to decide he no longer needs you.

As his hand encloses around your neck, his eyes are the last thing you see. You can see his past surrounding you in your blood as it pools around you, in a mock halo, matting into your hair. The last thing you see is the remorse, the regret suddenly dawning in him, the shock at himself and the sadness starting to fester there, but the last thing you ever experience is the final set of his memories as they come to you.

 

After Posurin’s death, Tasedio continued working for a time. He wanted to keep his mind off of what had just happened, but it didn’t rid him of his thoughts as much as he had hoped—that is to say, not at all—so he stopped from grief shortly afterword.

Loki was absolutely ecstatic that all the rest of the Council was gone and Tas was miserable, and started near-constant assaults on Tas’s mental state in hopes that he would break down. It never seemed to do much, though. It just made him lethargic and sad. He hoped that Loki would get bored with all the sobbing and not eating and such, especially since his powers waned as he slowly starved himself. He was becoming less and less valuable to the god, so he wondered why the other was still trying.

As the weeks went on, Loki began a different approach. He started trying to cheer up Tas, to try to get him to eat something, to get him to get up and do _anything_ other than lie in bed with that pitiful look on his face during the day and thrash about in terror during the night. Tas hoped that eventually he’d go into a state where he wouldn’t wake up anymore. Perhaps if he starved himself long enough, his hyper-metabolism would give up the ghost and decide to turn off his immortality.

This continued for a little over a year before he gave up on trying to die. Tas had heard about this strange custom that the humans had, at least over in the United States, where they would make resolutions about the coming year, would try to improve themselves in some way. So, when the ball dropped and the year turned 1995, Tasedio resolved to get better, to go back to helping the humans out and to make their lives better than he ever could have before.

Though even getting out of bed in the morning was a hassle for him at this point, it was even more difficult for him to actively affect the way that people lived. He paid more attention to the news and found himself alarmed by how much people were affected by people with ill intentions. There were murders on the streets for something as petty as money or a wrong glance. There were entire groups of people that banded together to murder and steal. Now that Posurin was gone, it was his duty to make sure that the humans had improved lives at his hand, and he was fairly certain that he had to make this stop, since no one else would even if they could.

First, though, he thought he might have to start with himself.

Tas thought that Loki might have sensed this thought, because the instant that it crossed his mind, the god scurried away into the corners of his mind like a frightened animal. It took no small amount of prying and pursuit to find him and get him out of his hiding spot, and a great deal of effort more to keep him out in the open and exposed. “Loki, I know that you don’t like the idea of changing in order to become more prepared for helping out the humans, but it’s a necessary evil. I mean, if you want to stay here and stay alive, you’re going to have to pay the metaphorical rent. You’ve been avoiding it for far too long, functioning only on my charity. I’m not going to be so generous from here on out. Do you understand?”

Loki didn’t answer. He writhed under the metaphorical spotlight in Tas’s mind, trying to wrench himself free and escape and scurry away so that he could regroup. “That’s not an answer. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take action if you’re not going to do anything.”

“Please don’t,” Loki said, breathless. “Please let me stay. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry that I don’t believe you,” Tas replied. “I suppose now is as good a time as any to start testing this sort of stuff out. _Stay where you are._ ”

Loki held fast, struggling against the command but finding himself unable to move. “I hate you,” he seethed. “I should have never thought you were endearing. I should have known you would turn upon me.”

Tas made a disapproving noise. “Loki, don’t be like that. I’m just going to sort out your priorities. It’ll be alright.”

With that, he withdrew into his own mind, pinning Loki down and drawing words to his tongue to use like a scalpel as he took Loki apart. “You’re clearly here for more reason than just self-preservation. I mean, you’d have to be, otherwise you’d have been more effective in your assaults. I think we both know you were holding back. Why on earth would you do that? I think _you’ve grown_ _attached to me_. I think there’s still some commands sticking around in your mind that make you want to _listen to me_. Isn’t that right?” he said, not truly allowing Loki enough time to answer any of his questions or commands, cutting away at his resistance and his idea of himself with a barrage of words aimed in all the right places. “You might even find that _the only way that you’ll survive is if you obey my every command_. You don’t want to die, do you? After all, if I can do this, obviously I could kill you at a moment’s notice. You’re only alive because I will it. _You should show me a little more gratitude_. The best way to do that would be to _serve me,_ I think, and to _help me to help the humans._ You should _start giving back_ from what you’ve taken, since _you’ve taken so much_. I understand if you don’t always agree with me, but I’d really appreciate it if you would _know your place. You need to obey me. You need to help others. Repeat that to yourself a few times.”_

There was fear in Loki’s eyes when he whispered, “I need to obey you. I need to help others. I need to obey you. I need to help others. I need to—“

“Good,” Tas said, smiling and gently rubbing Loki’s shoulders. “Don’t be afraid. It’ll be alright, I told you. I just don’t think you’ve quite been pulling your weight between us. _I’m trying to help you_. We’re going to work together to fight against the strife that consumes the humans, alright? Is that alright?”

“I need to obey you,” he breathed, “I need to help others.”

“ _Don’t say it if you don’t believe it_ ,” Tas replied. “Wouldn’t want you pointlessly repeating something that you were fighting against.” Loki fell silent, and Tas huffed. “Oh, don’t be like that! Tell me how you’re feeling, at least. I’m working off of nothing, here. I just want to help you.”

There was something like faith or hope in Loki’s expression when he responded. “I feel like… like I’ve been too much of a detriment to you, and that I should make it up to you by obeying you, certainly. But I don’t feel like I need to help others. I simply don’t see the point.”

“Other people are very important, Loki. We should help them whenever possible, and if we do, they may do the same for us. But we don’t do it for retribution. We do it out of kindness. Though I suppose you’re not big on kindness.”

“Not really,” Loki said. “Sorry to disappoint. I want to help you, though. I want you to rule. I want to help you help others.”

“Close enough,” Tas conceded. “Then let’s get to work. If you’re going to repeat something, I want it to be something you can actually get behind. Let’s change ‘need’ to ‘want.’ It makes it more oriented toward you. _You want to help me. You want to obey me. Start drilling that into your mind._ I’ve got some other things to be doing.”

As Tas withdrew, he heard the faint murmur in the back of his head, “I want to help you. I want to obey you. I want to help you. I want to obey you.”

 

It took quite some time for Tas to regain his strength. He started going back to help people, eating regularly, and getting up and moving around. It was the most difficult thing he’d ever done. Every day he wondered why he was bothering, and he would remind himself that it was worth it because he was going to help the humans to survive. If he couldn’t get out of bed to do that, then they would fall, and he would have failed them. With all the others dead, he couldn’t bear to let that happen. 

He returned to Loki after about a week of focusing on other things to find a broken wreck on the metaphorical ground. His previously red hair had turned black as pitch, his eyes dull and carrying dark circles under them like weights. “Loki,” he asked softly, “are you doing alright?”

“I want to help you,” the god sobbed. “I want to obey you. I want to—“

“ _That’s enough,_ ” Tas said, putting a gentle hand on Loki’s shoulder. “It’s alright, I’m here. Let me help you up.” He brought Loki to his feet, holding him close, and looked at him. “I’m here. You can stop crying.”

Loki sniffled and buried his face in Tas’s shoulder. “I love you,” he mumbled, shaking in Tas’s grasp. “I love you so much.”

Tas scrunched his eyebrows together and frowned as he rubbed Loki’s back. “Are you… are you okay?”

“You were gone for so long,” he said as he shivered. “You left me. I’m not angry, I was just scared. Please keep holding me. I’m so glad you’ve returned. I love you.” There was an emotion that Tasedio didn’t recognize present in Loki’s eyes, one he’d never seen directed toward him before. The closest he’d ever come was with Arasen and her sad, lilting smiles, the ones she’d give him before she shook her head and kissed him. Loki had something similar in his eyes, but it was more passionate, needy, and fervent in a way that had never been turned toward him. It startled him, but it was an expression of such affection that he wasn’t sure how to react to it. The more he looked, though, the more certain he was that he wished more people looked at him like that.

He swallowed to ground himself, then asked, “What do you want me to do?”

Loki bit his lip. “Don’t leave me again,” he started. “And… allow me to help you in whatever you choose to do. You lead. I’ll follow. I believe in your judgment.”

Tas smiled. “I rather like the sound of that. What do you think I should do concerning the problems of the humans?”

“Do to them what you did to me,” Loki said. “Show them what living should be like, lost in adoration of you. I feel right and whole and necessary for the first time since I can remember. They cannot handle themselves. I had planned to destroy them before, but no. No, you should rule them, certainly. It will solve their conflicts, and they will feel absolutely sublime.”

Staring at the ground, Tas made a face. “I’m not exactly certain that many of them would agree with you.”

“To Hel with those that don’t agree,” Loki said, passionate and vicious. “Let them rot. They cannot stop you. They could not dream of it. Take the humans and make them yours. It is your duty as their protector. They are out of control and must be changed for their own safety, for their own survival, as a wild animal that will tear itself to pieces if it is not trained and kept under a close watch. Their free will got them this far. Now it’s up to you to save them.”

“I’ll think about it,” Tas said, but his mind was made up. It was selfish, surely, and perhaps it was incredibly inhumane, but if it meant that they would look at him the way that Loki had, with true appreciation and love and a myriad of other things that he’d never been shown on the level that others had received, he would unmake each of the humans, one by one. They deserved no less than his personal best and individual attention, and, in his mind, he deserved no less than at least a glimmer of affection, no matter how false it was.

He decided, though, that he would keep Loki guessing for a bit longer.

With his decision in mind, Tasedio went back to job-hopping. His face changed often, but his incessant smile and playful nature were staples throughout every person that he pretended to be. He didn’t really enjoy the idea that he was better than everyone else, but the more he worked with the humans, the more of a fact it seemed to become. Perhaps not in character, but he was certainly stronger, faster, and smarter than any of them, so he ended up becoming better at low-level jobs than anyone that had been there for years. That was what really made him feel bad, in the end. So, around the turn of the millennium, he stopped, and made a trip to England. He had remembered it from years when he’d been traveling around the world, and he liked it a lot. He needed a change of pace, besides.

It was hard for him to live here, though. He couldn’t seem to remember how to make friends, or talk to people for the first time outside of a business setting, or anything that he would have deemed important. The only person he seemed to really hit it off with was someone he’d accidentally bumped into, a young adult named Thomas. He was an actor on the stage at his college. Eton, Tas was pretty sure he’d said. They’d become fast friends, but as Tas wasn’t really sure how to communicate well with anyone, he remained a sort of awkward friendship with the boy and tried to keep his distance. After all, when he made friends, nothing but disaster ever seemed to follow.

He kept moving in his life, staying close to the few friends he found himself able to make, while he started trying to turn others to his ideas. It was more difficult than he’d thought to get them isolated enough to try to take them apart, to see what made them tick, and to reshape their core into something that would be more constructive for the people around them. Eventually, he started to notice flaw in Thomas as well, chipper and well-meaning as the boy was. There were certain times when he would lose his temper and take it out on others that were simply unacceptable. It had been a detriment to other people, and thus, he had to be altered. Perhaps only slightly, but it still needed to happen, or else he would be allowing his close friend to hurt others, and that was unacceptable.

Tas finally got the gall to ask Thomas to meet him privately, and he accepted with a smile. He had looked a little dreamy and dazed, maybe, and maybe Tas had used Lanadel’s abilities to help him, but that was neither here nor there. The point was that he’d gotten Thomas into his home, of his own volition. The boy looked like a golden retriever, with a mop of blonde curls and an overenthusiastic attitude. “Sit down,” Tas requested, and Thomas did so without question. It was then that Tas invaded his mind.

Everything inside the youth was stripped bare and revealed to him. He’d grown used to this in the time he’d been changing people, but it was still a little surreal to see everything that Thomas had ever thought, had ever felt, at Tas’s fingertips. There was an image of Thomas in his mind, a reflection of his consciousness, and it was this visualization that Tasedio approached. “Hello,” he said, trying to sound cheery. “I’m just here to help.”

“I somehow don’t believe you,” Thomas whispered, staring back at Tas defiantly. “You’ve just come into my mind without permission.”

Tas found his head tipping to the side in confusion. “ _I think you’ll find it easier to allow me to help you._ ”

“No,” the mortal replied, even as his eyes grew dull. “I don’t know why you’re in here, but I’d like it if you would get out.”

Taken aback, Tas stared at Thomas with words catching in his throat. “I—I don’t know how you’ve done that, but you need to stop. I’m only trying to aid you.”

“Get out of my head,” Thomas ordered. “I’m not asking you to help me. I’m doing just fine.”

“You let your anger rule you at times,” Tas said, a note of panic in his voice. “I’m just trying to help you tone it down a little.”

“Everyone gets a little angry sometimes. It’s only human. Clearly you aren’t.” The blonde’s fists clenched. “I’m only going to tell you once more.”

“ _You cannot win against me,”_ Tasedio barked. “ _Relax. Let yourself grow calm. Allow me to take control so that you can be a better person._ ”

“No,” Thomas said, his muscles tensing and relaxing rapidly enough to make him appear as though he was twitching, his breathing fluctuating in pace. “No. Absolutely not.”

“ _Trust me!_ ” Tas shouted.

“Never!” Thomas growled, his teeth bared. “I will never give in to your demands. I don’t know why you’re here. I trusted you before. I thought you were a good person. I don’t know why you’ve thought it necessary to poke about in my head, but I need you to leave. I’m not going to give up. I won’t back down. I don’t care how many people you’ve done this to before that have just given in and let you make the changes you deemed necessary, but I’m not that sort of person. I try my hardest to be kind and apologetic, but if you try to fight me, I will not stand and allow it. I will fight back with every ounce of my being.”

Tasedio took a deep breath, looked his former friend in the eyes, and said, “So be it.”

It was frightening how quickly the last surviving member of the Council started to rattle off commands intended to disorient and exhaust. Surprisingly, Thomas held his ground. He was shaking, certainly, and making the most awful pained faces and clutching at his imaginary skull, but he was still standing, and Tas couldn’t have that. “ _Just let yourself sleep,_ ” he told Thomas. “ _It’ll be easier than resisting this assault._ ”

The mortal dropped to his knees, his eyes wide and vacant. “Yes, sir,” he said before falling to the ground.

Tas rushed up to him, biting his lip. “Thomas, I’m sorry, but this was for the best. I need you to change so that others may benefit.”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said, his cheek resting on the floor.

“Are you alright?” Tas asked, pulling him up into a sitting position.

“Yes, sir.”

Tas clenched his jaw. “Can you say anything else?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please do so,” Tas said. Thomas just stared at him with his wide blue eyes. Tas didn’t think he could actually see anything. “Please, please be alright. I don’t want to have killed another friend. I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to help you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“ _Wake up._ ”

Thomas blinked.

Tas took the boy by the shoulders and shook him as gently as he could manage given his emotional state, which was quite rough for a human. Thomas did not respond, allowing his head to bob back and forth as his torso was moved around. “Did I break you?” Tas asked, his voice shaking.

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?”

Thomas remained silent.

“Alright, I suppose I’m going to have to get creative. _I need you to say more than just ‘yes, sir.’ I need you to speak freely._ ”

“Yes, sir.”

Tas winced, then asked, “Are you dead?”

The mortal blinked a few times, paused, and answered, “In a sense, yes, sir.”

“Elaborate, please.”

Thomas’s eyes fluttered some more, then he spoke. “My stubbornness and your force broke my mind, sir. It is… difficult for me to form sentences. I will die soon, but for now, I am… as alive as I can be. I will serve your every whim until my end, though. You’ve shown me the light, sir.”

“No,” Tas whispered, shaking his head. “Not again. Not again. You had so much potential.”

“Perhaps,” Thomas said. “But it doesn’t matter, sir.”

“Yes it does.” As he swallowed, Tas held the mortal in his arms and looked around him. All of his aspirations, his dreams for the future, his talents were written around them. “I’ll do it. I’ll do all this for you.”

“What?” Thomas asked, his voice growing feeble. “I don’t understand, sir.”

Tas gave him a small smile. “I’ll become you. I’ll become the actor you wanted to be. I’ll teach the whole world your name, and I’ll unite them under the idea of you. You’ve shown me that I can’t use brute force to change the world. I have to be precise. I have to be gentle. I have to reshape them with care, showing them the compassion that you held inside your heart.”

“Oh.” He blinked, slower this time. “I… I appreciate it, I think.”

“I’m sorry that I killed you,” Tas said. “This is the best that I can do to make it up to you. I’ll keep you in my mind, and in my heart, for the rest of eternity.”

Thomas nodded. “Okay. Thank you. Good luck in your, um, plans, and all that. I think I’m going to… I think I’m going to go to sleep.” He closed his eyes once more, and did not open them again.

This time, there was no essence to inhale, and Tas buried the body alone in the middle of the night as rain poured down on his head, mud soiling his shoes and pants as he looked down at the face that now mirrored his own.


	10. This hurricane's chasing us all underground

In the end, there was only one.

Tasedio walked alone. It was the only way he could bear to face himself anymore. He had chased all his friends to the grave, had buried them all with blood still staining his hands. Their voices chattered endlessly in his head, telling him what he should do, where he should go. He ignored them. Loki walked beside him, telling him what he thought, telling him how best he should change the others. He ignored Loki, too.

All he could do was honor his late friend Thomas in trying to become the person that the actor had wanted to be. It would further his own purposes—it would be far easier to reach people if he were a popular actor, far easier to move around the world and still earn money—and it would be the only sendoff that the mortal would ever receive.

So he took his name, took his face, and became the Thomas Hiddleston that the world wanted. He took on acting roles, gently nudging those he spent time around toward support of him, toward positive feelings and support. It didn’t make him feel any better, of course, but at least he was making progress.

Eventually, he needed Loki for a role. He let Loki out, allowed him to act, allowed him some vestige of freedom and the god latched onto it with a fervency that he could have never imagined. It was remarkable, actually, how much he enjoyed the pursuit. Tas didn’t think he had seen Loki so happy in years. The role later called for a Loki that was unlike what he’d seen before, one broken beyond comprehension. After all that the god had been saying incessantly in his mind, Tas was all too happy to oblige.

The movie came out and then the recognition started to swell. He wasn’t certain whether or not it seemed to transfer through a visual medium, but it seemed to be working. He had access to so many minds that he’d never known, their consciousnesses lighting up his telepathic communications like so many stars in the darkest night sky. The world was vast, but he was certain that he could fix things. After all, he had come from somewhere a bit more vast than the earth, and there was something in his bones that said he came from somewhere even further away. He could do anything he set his mind to, and he was dedicated to fixing the world. So he picked out the people who had interest in him, and overnight, while they slept, he touched upon their minds, imprinting himself and his presence. He gained a following, dedicated people who followed his every move.

There was no question to what he did. He was turning without remorse, without even a thought of the lives he was changing. He tried his hardest not to think about it whenever he did it, because when he started to think about it, he would remember Thomas, and he would be overcome with grief strong enough to make him lose his last meal. It took him some time to numb himself to the process, but after a time, it became unconscious.

He had many places that he lived in secret all over the globe, just to make sure that he never got too comfortable in any one place, and Loki followed him everywhere he went. The god’s hair was still dark, changed forever by the movie he’d worked on and what he’d suffered. His eyes, too, were dark, but in a different sense, one that the last member of the Council couldn’t quite place. Still, they looked upon Tas with adoration, and that was all that he wanted.

The worst part, though, was that Loki seemed to be actively suffering every time Tas couldn’t pay attention to him for a few days at a time. He would ask for attention, and then when he was ignored, he would debase himself and sob uncontrollably. It was so unlike the trickster god, but Tas was beyond caring how badly he had broken the other. It was too exhausting for him to focus on such things. All he could do was try to calm him down when he had the time. He seemed to enjoy the attention. Tas couldn’t really blame him. When it got down to it, everything he was doing was something like a grab for attention, anyway.

“I think I’m in love with you,” Loki said quietly one afternoon while setting the tea to boil. The silence hung in the air for several minutes, Tas focusing on everything else, it seemed, but Loki.

“I don’t deserve it,” he finally mumbled, “but thank you.”

“If you didn’t deserve it, I wouldn’t have these feelings,” Loki said, a bit cross.

Tas shook his head. “I brainwashed you into having them in the first place. Of course you’d still have them if I didn’t deserve it.”

“You did no such thing.”

As if to prove a point, Tas stared at Loki and snapped his fingers with a cold, dry gaze. The dark-haired man’s eyes widened. “I… want to… help you,” he breathed, “I want… to…” Another snap, and he stopped abruptly, glaring at Tas. “You know that I cared for you before then.”

“You didn’t love me until I broke you,” Tas said, his voice flat. “You were trying to kill me.”

Loki made a noise of disdain, as though he had something to say, but stopped as he looked over at the kettle that had started to release steam. He poured the hot water into a pair of mugs carrying infusers, setting one in front of Tas and keeping one for himself. Tas stared down into the cup. “I said teabags were fine.”

“I don’t like them,” Loki said, shaking his head. “I prefer loose-leaf. I don’t like depending on anyone else to judge how much flavor I want in my tea, or what flavor. I’ll make it how I damn well please.”

“Okay,” Tas replied as he absently pulled the infuser out of the water, watched it drain of the slowly darkening water, and lowered it back down. He repeated this several times before Loki spoke again.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you, anyway. I was trying to break you, certainly, so that you would love me back. I knew you wouldn’t otherwise.” He paused again, this time more briefly. “Well, and I wanted true immortality and your powers and to be in control of your body, but that’s beside the point. The point is, I’m concerned that you won’t reciprocate. Would you be more comfortable if I were in a female form?” he asked, visage shifting to that of a woman. “I can be whomever you wish. You know that.”

“I feel too terrible about ruining you to ever feel like I’m worthy enough to love you,” Tas said. “I think that might prevent me from ever forming a relationship with you.”

Loki closed his eyes, wrapping his hands around his tea mug and taking a deep breath. “Alright,” he said. “I will remain by your side. But never forget that even in your darkest moments, I love you.”

“Thank you,” Tas said.

 

They eventually came to the consensus that Loki alone could not aid Tas in his conquest. After all, he was easily influenced, and had clear bias. Tas wanted someone in the equation who wasn’t as attracted to him, someone who wasn’t going to simply fall over themselves to please him. He wanted someone strong of mind and will, someone who could tell him if he was doing something wrong.

It occurred to him that this might even be a suitable person to keep him in line and make sure he didn’t become a terrible person in the end. This was something that he’d worried about at great length, and Loki had assured him that it wasn’t going to happen, but that had done little to assuage his fears. If he had an external source to guide his morals, however, he would feel much more secure in his ability to remain on-track for what the humans needed. After all, if he was lost to corruption as well, then all would be lost, and everyone and everything would be far beyond saving. The thought frightened Tas deeply, and so he wanted to take the first and best possible route toward avoiding it—an advisor.

Unfortunately, most of the people he’d been able to reach so far were people he had already reshaped, or people that were inclined toward liking him more than he found necessary for this endeavor. It was a bit frustrating, actually, to have such a vast problem and so many people that would be willing to help, but could not possibly fit the criteria that he had set out. So he searched harder, deeper, looked through everyone he could possibly find that had even brushed minds with him.

That’s how he found you.

He didn’t know it at first. He had just filed it away in another part of his mind—“Robin, possible candidate”—and hadn’t thought any more of it. He looked into others, found them to be something he wasn’t quite looking for, and turned away. He almost forgot about the idea altogether. But something brought him back to it. He couldn’t take his mind off of the knowledge he had—there was another potential candidate, and this idea seemed to latch onto him and refuse to let go. This was how he knew that he was on the right track.

He did not pursue you for a very long time. He didn’t want to be creepy or anything. So he just checked in on occasion. He went through your thoughts, your memories, your aspirations, and found them all to be exactly what he needed. He made sure that you didn’t grow more and more infatuated as time passed. You didn’t. This made him the happiest of all. Perhaps you would be able to stand beside him and make sure that he didn’t run rampant upon the world. Maybe.

He decided to seek you out.

It is here that the memories crack, fracturing into a blinding light. You know that you’re dying. Pain is composing a symphony in the back of your skull, and you’ve been feeling it rise for some time even though the memories are flashing through you at a speed you can hardly comprehend. You can see his eyes, pleading with you. You can see his genesis in the sky. And you think—you think you can see more. You think you can see further back.

There’s light even brighter than there was before. You didn’t think it possible. There is fire, there is heat, and you feel as though you have been physically burned. You feel Tas recoil with you, as though he has been scorched as well. Perhaps he has. The light is fading fast. You think everything is going to go dark soon.

He puts his hands on your head and mutters something under his breath. You see a previously omitted arc about him learning the magic of his own language, and then it is upon you. You feel like you’re being drawn out of your body, and he’s sobbing now, clutching at you with hands that can’t seem to hold you, as though you are water slipping between his fingers.

He approached you knowing exactly what he wanted, and he took it and he broke it anyway.

His mouth is open in a silent plea.

You might have forgiven him if you had the ability. It looks as though he’s trying to keep you in your body for a little while longer, and it seems to be working. He puts his hand firmly to the back of your head, trying to stop the bleeding.

“You knew,” you tell him. “You had to have known. You can see the future.”

He murmurs, as though very far away, “This is the reason that I don’t look.”

“Is there anything more?” you ask.

“Only a bit,” he replies. “I want to save it for… for your last. So that you don’t have to feel pain when… when…” The tears begin to roll again, and you can feel something nagging at the back of your head, telling you that there used to be excruciating pain there, but now there is only a dull numbness that makes you feel calm. This must have been what the real Thomas felt like, you think. Tas doesn’t respond. You’re not sure he heard you. He didn’t need to.

“It’s okay,” you lie to him. “I’ll be fine.”

He nods, sniffling. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m… I’m going to take you up into my head, if that’s okay. I’m going to make you a new body. I’m going to give you the immortality I promised. Deal?”

You know he’s suffering from delusions. You’re not of the Council. There’s no way that he could absorb your mind. But you’re already dying, there’s nothing that can be done about it anymore, and you’d rather he not be upset for the rest of his existence as a ruler considering the implications that could have for humanity as a whole, so you tell him, “Deal.”

Tas smiles and kisses your forehead. “Thank you. I never thought I’d share a space with you in my head.”

“I didn’t either,” you tell him.

He pauses. “I probably won’t remember this,” he says. “I have this bad habit of mis-remembering things, especially when they’re important. In fact, if you manifest externally… I might forget that this happened at all.”

“It’s okay,” you say. “Part of you will remember, and that’s what matters.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “That is what’s important. Thank you. You’re always so wise. God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to… I…” He puts his forehead to yours, shivering slightly. “I’m so sorry.”

You can’t muster the energy to pat him on the arm, so you nod instead. “It’ll be okay. Stay strong. You have to be the ruler that humanity needs you to be.”

He nods. “Of course. I’ll still have your wisdom helping me out, and I’ll still be able to rule properly. It’ll be okay. It’ll all be okay.”

“Yeah,” you tell him, even though you don’t believe it. The strength continues to believe your body, and it’s getting hard to stay conscious. “It’ll be okay.”

“When I take my hand away,” he says, biting his lip, “you’re going to die. You’re literally held together by magic right now.”

“Okay,” you tell him. “How long do I have?”

“A while,” he replies.

“How long is a while.”

He looks around, a little nervous. “Probably fifteen minutes. That’s about how long I’ll last before my magic gives out. I don’t want to let you go sooner, though. I want to have you around so that you can tell me how I’m doing. I don’t want to fail at this. I don’t want to be who I was five minutes ago. I don’t want to be who I was when I first met you. Both of those versions of me will break you. I need to be something new, something that can keep you safe and whole.”

“Yeah,” you agree.

He looks down at you, shaking. “Is there anything you’d like me to do before…”

“Make sure it stays painless,” you tell him. “And bring me back when you can.”

“Of course,” he says. “I can hardly imagine a life without you by my side, my love. I’ve known I loved you since we first met. You didn’t know me then, no, but I was… I was scouting, you see, for a completely different reason, and I happened to see you, and I knew it was you. I knew it had to be you, because I could feel that you were exactly what I needed. I was so ecstatic. I don’t think I could live without you, anymore. I imagine I’d be consumed by depression and self-doubt. So I’ll bring you back as soon as I can. I’ll save you. I have to, for both of us.”

“Okay,” you tell him. “I know you have more to say. This is the last chance you’ll have.” You think about what you’ve said, then add, “For a while, anyway.”

He nods, as though he understands in both senses. “I didn’t mean it,” he says, exhaling. “I didn’t mean to do this. I didn’t mean to kill anyone. I don’t know why I did. There’s just something so terribly broken inside of me that reacts… violently to external stimuli that it can’t react to otherwise. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t befriend anyone ever again. All I do is destroy.” He stops, shaking his head. “They were right all along.”

“What’s that?” you ask. Your voice is starting to grow hoarse.

“The Council. Some of them said… some joking, some not so much… that I was a force of nature. That I was a storm on the horizon that couldn’t be stopped or bartered with. That I couldn’t even understand my own actions until it was too late, and I had brought everything before me to ruin, and left only destruction, death, and despair in my wake. The worst part is, I’m a storm that keeps raging for all eternity. Will I eventually kill everyone? Or can I somehow calm and allow people to rebuild?” He shakes his head,  tears once more springing to his eyes. “I can’t do this. I can’t do it. I can’t rule.”

“Tasedio,” you say, and his eyes turn glassy. “Don’t worry about it. If something about your rule is going wrong, some part of you will be aware of it and will move to action. I can guarantee it.”

He nods slowly, blinking as he does so. “It’ll be okay,” he mutters to himself. He looks at you, and there is a plea in his expression. “Don’t let me think,” he says, but you shake your head.

“You might lose me faster if you can’t think.”

He nods. “Yes, I suppose I might. Didn’t think about that.” He looks down at the blood you know is pooling around the both of you. “I’m going to lose sleep over this.”

“As you should,” you tell him, and he nods.

“Yes.” He stares at you for a while, as though committing your face to memory.

“How much did you leave out?” you ask. “After all, you left out all of you learning magic. What else isn’t there?”

“The Lullaby,” he murmurs, “and a great deal more that I don’t want to trouble you with.”

You shake your head. “You thought that when you show me your entire unabridged life, that included taking some parts out.”

“There are some parts I didn’t feel you’d want to see,” he says, and you laugh.

“Yes, because I absolutely love watching you kill everyone.”

The look on his face is rage and sorrow, and you can tell that he very nearly drops you before realizing what he was doing. “I’m sorry,” he says, his countenance clearing. “I’m so sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have omitted some things and allowed others. I shouldn’t have showed you at all. It put me back into the mindset of the past. If I’m honest, there are parts of the empire that are falling as we speak because I caused them to topple. And… if I were to show you anything, I shouldn’t have discriminated with what I showed you and what I didn’t. I should have let you know everything. I should’ve showed you the whole truth.” He sighs. “I’m sorry. I wish I had let Hirese kill me from the start.”

“Don’t say that,” you murmur, wincing from internal pain rather than his statement. “There’s still hope for you.” Maybe you don’t believe it as much as you should, or as much as you’d like to, but there’s at least a glimmer of hope there, and that’s what will keep him going, and perhaps it’ll help to make him a better person. Who knows? Maybe his memory of you can set him straight better than you ever could.

“I’m glad you think so,” he says. “I know there’s at least one last thing that I want to do before… before it all ends.”

“What’s that?” you ask, and then his mouth is on yours, your thoughts rapidly clearing from your head as his kiss works its own magic on you. You feel as though you are in a haze. Your head is fuzzy and it’s hard to see, but that’s alright, because nothing matters except for Tas. You can hardly even think of him as Tom anymore. It’s not who he is, not really. That’s okay. You know the truth, even if no one else does, and that’s all that matters. You know the truth that he loves you, too, even though he was, in the end, fatally violent toward you. It’s not like that doesn’t matter, because you are slowly dying, but it’s of little consequence to the rest of the world at this point. They probably won’t even know the difference between you and the replacement that he invents for you.

You wish you could have stopped him. You wish you could have done anything to stop him, to get him help, to make him feel better about himself so he didn’t feel the need to take a hero complex upon himself and turn everyone into something wholly different than they were before, something terrifying and dystopian. But what could you have done? You would’ve had to be invulnerable to his powers to be able to stop him.

When he breaks off the kiss, you whisper, “Tas?”

His eyebrows scrunch together, and he bites his lip briefly. “Yes? Why are you calling me that?”

“Just comes out more naturally now,” you reply. “I have a… request for you.”

He still looks confused, but nods. “What is it?”

“When you make me immortal with you, can you make me immune to your powers? Then I’ll be able to help you better. I’ll be able to do everything that you wanted me to be able to do and more. That’s all.”

Tas looks at you and gives you a smile laced with melancholy. “I can try,” he says, and you wince.

“That’s not good enough,” you tell him. “Tasedio, I need you to give me immunity to your powers, or else this will all just happen again and again and again.”

“I’ll try,” he says again, his eyes blank. “I don’t know if the others will allow it, but if they do, then I will do as you have asked.”

“I certainly hope that you can,” you tell him, and he nods faintly.

“I do too.” He blinks a few times, then takes a deep breath. “I’m running low on energy. I’m afraid that I’m going to have to let you go.”

You nod as much as you can with his hand desperately clutching your hair. “That’s alright,” you say, and you think you can feel your voice giving out already as the pain starts to come back. “Go ahead.”

There is a flash, and you’re back to his memories, immersed in his pursuit of you.

 

It was entirely on accident, but that didn’t make it any less special. He could sense you in the vicinity, and so after his business was finished, he decided to seek you out. He had purposefully made sure to avoid your memories of viewing yourself, of what you looked like, of anything that might tip him off. So he finds you based on telepathy alone.

When he sees you for the first time, his heart lifts, and his eyes are bright as a summer’s day.


End file.
